scovery and the exploration are different
things, and the first is quicker and more certain than the second.
Most of us will admit that we have not gone very far up into that
Continent. The object of this chapter is not to attempt to survey or
compendiarise Christian exploration of Jesus, but to try to find for
ourselves a new approach to an estimate of the historical figure who
has been and remains the centre of everything.

We may classify the records of the Christian exploration roughly in
three groups. In the early Christian centuries, we find endless
thought given to the philosophical study of the relation of Christ
and God. It fills the library of the Early Church, and practically
all the early controversies turn upon it. The weak spot in all this
was the use of the "a priori" method. Men started with
preconceptions about God--not unnaturally, for we all have some
theories about God, which we are apt to regard as knowledge. But
knowledge is a difficult thing to reach in any sphere of study; and
men assumed too quickly that they had attained a sound philosophical
account of God. They over-estimated their actual knowledge of God
and did not recognize to the full the importance of their new
experience. This may seem ungenerous to men, who gave life and
everything for Jesus Christ, and to whose devotion, to whose love of
Jesus, we owe it that we know him--an ungenerous criticism of their
brave thinking, and their independence in a hundred ways of old
tradition. Still it is true that the weakness of much of their
Christology--and of ours--is that it starts with a borrowed notion
of God, which really has very little to do with the Christian
religion. To this we shall return; but in the meantime we may note
that here as elsewhere preconceptions have to be lightly held by the
serious student. Huxley once wrote to Charles Kingsley: "Science
seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great
truth that is embodied in the Christian conception of entire
surrender to the will of God. Sit down before the fact as a little
child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and to whatever end Nature leads, or you shall learn
nothing .... I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind
since I have resolved at all risks to do this." So Huxley wrote
about the study of natural science. In this great inquiry of ours we
have to learn to be patient enough--we might say, ignorant
enoug