conquers."

CHAPTER X

JESUS IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Jesus Christ came to men as a great new experience. He took them far
outside all they had known of God and of man. He led them,
historically, into what was, in truth, a new world, into a new
understanding of life in all its relations. What they had never
noticed before, he brought to their knowledge, he made interesting
to them, and intelligible. In short, as Paul put it, "if any man be
in Christ, it is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). The aspects of
things were different; the values were changed, and a new
perspective made clear relations that were obscure and tangled
before. Why should it have been so? Why should it be, that, when a
man comes into contact, into some kind of sympathy with Jesus
Christ, some living union with him, everything becomes new, and he
by and by begins to feel with St. Paul: "To me to live is Christ"
(Phil. 1:21)? Why has Jesus meant so much? Why should all this be
associated with him?

Plato, in the sentence already quoted, tells us that "the unexamined
life is unliveable for a human being, for a real man." Here, then,
came into man's life a new experience altogether, like nothing known
before altering everything, giving new sympathies, new passions, new
enthusiasms--a new attitude to God and a new attitude to men. It was
inevitable that thought must work upon it. Who was this Jesus that
he should produce this result? Men asked themselves that very early;
and if they were slow to do so, the criticism of the outsider drove
them into it. The result has been nineteen centuries of endless
question and speculation as to Jesus Christ--the rise of dogma,
creed, and formula, as slowly all the philosophy of mankind has been
re-thought in the light of the central experience of Jesus Christ.
In spite of all that we may regret in the war of creeds, it was
inevitable--it was part of the disturbance that Jesus foresaw he
must make (Luke 12:51). Men "could do no other"--they had to
determine for themselves the significance of Jesus in the real
world, in the whole cosmos of God; and it meant fruitful conflict of
opinion, the growth of the human mind, and an ever-heightened
emphasis on Jesus.

An analogy may illustrate in some way the story before us. One of
the most fascinating chapters of geography is the early exploration
of America. Chesapeake Bay was missed by one explorer. Fog or
darkness may have been the cause of his missing the place; but he