the simpler view did not maintain itself. If false gods
and demons were expelled, it was the God Jesus who expelled them. The
more modest faith believed that in the man Jesus, being such an one as
he was, men had received the greatest gift which the love of God had to
bestow. In turn the believer felt the assurance that he also was a child
of God, and in the spirit of Jesus was to realise that sonship.
Syncretist religions suggested other thoughts. We see that already even
in the synoptic tradition the calling upon the name of Jesus had found
place. One wonders whether that first apprehension ever stood alone in
its purity. The Gentile Churches founded by Paul, at all events, had no
such simple trust. Equally, the second form of faith seems never to have
been able to stand alone in its peculiar quality. Some of the gnostic
sects had it. Marcion again is our example. The new God Jesus had
nothing to do with the cruel God of the Old Testament. He supplanted the
old God and became the only God. In the Church the new God, come down
from heaven, must be set in relation with the long-known God of Israel.
No less, must he stand in relation to the simple hero of the Gospels
with his human traits. The problem of theological reflexion was to find
the right middle course, to keep the divine Christ in harmony, on the
one side, with monotheism, and on the other, with the picture which the
Gospels gave. Belief knew nothing of these contradictions. The same
simple soul thanked God for Jesus with his sorrows and his sympathy, as
man's guide and helper, and again prayed to Jesus because he seemed too
wonderful to be a man. The same kind of faith achieves the same
wondering and touching combination to-day, after two thousand years.
With thought comes trouble. Reflexion wears itself out upon the
insoluble difficulty, the impossible combination, the flat
contradiction, which the two views present, so soon as they are clearly
seen.

In the earliest Christian writings the fruit of this reflexion lies
before us in this form:--The Creator of worlds, the mediator, the lord
of angels and demons, the Logos which was God and is our Saviour, was
yet a humble son of man, undergoing suffering and death, having laid
aside his divine glory. This picture is made with materials which the
canonical writings themselves afford. Theological study had henceforth
nothing to do but to avoid extremes and seek to make this image, which
reflexion upon two polar o