more often,
independently of it. He is finding it more often through his own contact
and relations with the Man of Nazareth--for him the God-man. There is no
greater fact in our time, and there is no greater hope for the future
than is to be found in this fact.

Jesus gave the great principles, the animating spirit of life, not
minute details of conduct. The real Church of Christ is not an
hierarchy, an institution, it is a brotherhood--the actual establishing
of the Kingdom of God in moral, ethical and social terms in the world.

Among the last words penned by Dr. John Watson--Ian Maclaren--good
churchman, splendid writer, but above all independent thinker and
splendid man, were the following: "Was it not the chief mistake and also
the hopeless futility of Pharisaism to meddle with the minute affairs of
life, and to lay down what a man should do at every turn? It was not
therefore an education of conscience, but a bondage of conscience; it
did not bring men to their full stature by teaching them to face their
own problems of duty and to settle them, it kept them in a state of
childhood, by forbidding and commanding in every particular of daily
life. Pharisaism, therefore, whether Jewish or Gentile, ancient or
modern, which replaces the moral law by casuistry, and the enlightened
judgment of the individual by the confessional, creates a narrow
character and mechanical morals. Freedom is the birthright of the soul,
and it is by the discipline of life the soul finds itself. It were a
poor business to be towed across the pathless ocean of this world to the
next; by the will of God and for our good we must sail the ship
ourselves, and steer our own course. It is the work of the Bible to show
us the stars and instruct us how to take our reckoning * * *.

"Jesus did not tell us what to do, for that were impossible, as every
man has his own calling, and is set in by his own circumstances, but
Jesus has told us how to carry ourselves in the things we have to do,
and He has put the heart in us to live becomingly, not by pedantic
rules, but by an instinct of nobility. Jesus is the supreme teacher of
the Bible and He came not to forbid or to command, but to place the
Kingdom of God as a living force, and perpetual inspiration within the
soul of man, and then, to leave him in freedom and in grace to fulfil
himself."[G]

We no longer admit that Christ is present and at work only when a
minister is expounding the gospel or some