ew to which he had attained which threw into the shade the
historical Christ. This is the view which many are seeking in our own
days, and--faced by the facts of Comparative Religion, puzzled by the
contradictions of the Gospels, confused by problems they cannot solve so
long as they are tied down to the mere surface meanings of their
Scripture--they cry despairingly that the letter killeth while the
spirit giveth life, and seek to trace some deep and wide significance in
a story which is as old as the religions of the world, and has always
served as the very centre and life of every religion in which it has
reappeared. These struggling thinkers, too unrelated and indefinite to
be spoken of as forming a school, seem to stretch out a hand on one side
to those who think that all is legend, asking them to accept a
historical basis; on the other side they say to their fellow Christians
that there is a growing danger lest, in clinging to a literal and unique
meaning, which cannot be defended before the increasing knowledge of the
day, the spiritual meaning should be entirely lost. There is a danger of
losing "the story of the Christ," with that thought of the Christ which
has been the support and inspiration of millions of noble lives in East
and West, though the Christ be called by other names and worshipped
under other forms; a danger lest the pearl of great price should escape
from our hold, and man be left the poorer for evermore.

What is needed, in order that this danger may be averted, is to
disentangle the different threads in the story of the Christ, and to lay
them side by side--the thread of history, the thread of legend, the
thread of mysticism. These have been intertwined into a single strand,
to the great loss of the thoughtful, and in disentangling them we shall
find that the story becomes more, not less, valuable as knowledge is
added to it, and that here, as in all that is basically of the truth,
the brighter the light thrown upon it the greater the beauty that is
revealed.

We will study first the historical Christ; secondly, the mythic Christ;
thirdly, the mystic Christ. And we shall find that elements drawn from
all these make up the Jesus Christ of the Churches. They all enter into
the composition of the grandiose and pathetic Figure which dominates the
thoughts and the emotions of Christendom, the Man of Sorrows, the
Saviour, the Lover and Lord of Men.

THE HISTORICAL CHRIST, OR JESUS THE HEALER AND