fice of which all other sacrifices are
reflexions.

We have seen how the man Jesus, the Hebrew disciple, laid down His body
in glad surrender that a higher Life might descend and become embodied
in the form He thus willingly sacrificed, and how by that act He became
a Christ of full stature, to be the Guardian of Christianity, and to
pour out His life into the great religion founded by the Mighty One with
whom the sacrifice had identified Him. We have seen the Christ-Soul
passing through the great Initiations--born as a little child, stepping
down into the river of the world's sorrows, with the waters of which he
must be baptised into his active ministry, transfigured on the Mount,
led to the scene of his last combat, and triumphing over death. We have
now to see in what sense he is an atonement, how in the Christ-life the
Law of Sacrifice finds a perfect expression.

The beginning of what may be called the ministry of the Christ come to
manhood is in that intense and permanent sympathy with the world's
sorrows which is typified by the stepping down into the river. From that
time forward the life must be summed up in the phrase, "He went about
doing good;" for those who sacrifice the separated life to be a channel
of the divine Life, can have no interest in this world save the helping
of others. He learns to identify himself with the consciousness of those
around him, to feel as they feel, think as they think, enjoy as they
enjoy, suffer as they suffer, and thus he brings into his daily waking
life that sense of unity with others which he experiences in the higher
realms of being. He must develop a sympathy which vibrates in perfect
harmony with the many-toned chord of human life, so that he may link in
himself the human and the divine lives, and become a mediator between
heaven and earth.

Power is now manifested in him, for the Spirit is resting on him, and he
begins to stand out in the eyes of men as one of those who are able to
help their younger brethren to tread the path of life. As they gather
round him, they feel the power that comes out from him, the divine Life
in the accredited Son of the Highest. The souls that are hungry come to
him and he feeds them with the bread of life; the diseased with sin
approach him, and he heals them with the living word which cures the
sickness and makes whole the soul; the blind with ignorance draw nigh
him, and he opens their eyes by the light of his wisdom. It is the chief