Christ, to bring him afresh into our lives, to make the
life so freely given for man minister again in new ways to man's new
needs. Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of great
ideas, capable, as all ideas are, of infinite expansion and adaptation.
And woe to our human weakness if it loose its hold one instant before it
must, on any of those rare and precious possessions which have helped it
in the past, and may again inspire it in the future!'

'_To reconceive the Christ!_ It is the special task of our age, though
in some sort and degree it has been the ever recurring task of Europe
since the beginning.'

He paused, and then very simply, and so as to be understood by those who
heard him, he gave a rapid sketch of that great operation worked by
the best intellect of Europe during the last half-century--broadly
speaking--on the facts and documents of primitive Christianity. From all
sides and by the help of every conceivable instrument those facts have
been investigated, and now at last the great result-'the revivified,
reconceived truth--seems ready to emerge! Much may still be known--much
can never be known; but if we will, we may now discern the true features
of Jesus of Nazareth, as no generation but our own has been able to
discern them, since those who had seen and handled, passed away.'

'Let me try, however feebly, and draw it afresh for you, that life of
lives, that story of stories, as the labor of our own age in particular
has patiently revealed it to us. Come back with me through the
centuries; let us try and see the Christ of Galilee and the Christ of
Jerusalem as he was, before a credulous love and Jewish tradition and
Greek subtlety had at once dimmed and glorified the truth. Ah! do what
we will, it is so scanty and poor, this knowledge of ours, compared with
all that we yearn to know--but, such as it is, let me, very humbly and
very tentatively, endeavor to put it before you.'

At this point Flaxman's attention was suddenly distracted by a stir
round the door of entrance on his left hand. Looking round, he saw a
Ritualist priest, in cassock and cloak, disputing in hurried undertones
with the men about the door. At last he gained his point apparently, for
the men, with half-angry, half-quizzing looks at each other, allowed
him to come in, and he found a seat. Flaxman was greatly struck by the
face--by its ascetic beauty, the stern and yet delicate whiteness and
emaciation of it. He sat wi