the theories contained in one Book, written by human authors, no
matter how admirable?

I felt it was impossible.

Then I remembered with relief that these very dogmas, as a matter of
fact, were in so fluent a state, that my own bare fifty years of living
had seen at least four different high-water marks!

Here again therefore, under my very eyes, was the universal law of
progress working, the moment it _could_ work, by being released from the
swaddling-clothes of the Roman Catholic Church, which, so far as it is
orthodox, is fossilised.

I saw also that the whole body of dissent had moved on, taking up its
pegs and planting them a little further on each time; till a City
temple, with its widening theology, was an established fact.

Progress everywhere--slow, but sure--and the pace getting quicker, even
in my short span! Still, the _uniqueness_ of Jesus of Nazareth and His
influence over the nineteen centuries was a puzzle.

Buddha's influence has lasted longer, Mahomet's almost as long (the two
cancel any way), but I have always recognised an _advance_ in the
teaching of Jesus Christ. He brought a fresh element, in the personal
note of the Sonship with GOD.

I was at this point when I came over here. Now through your mind I have
been able to see, and, oddly enough, to quicken in your soul, the seed
already planted there.

They tell me the illumination came to you years ago, at
Oberammergau--no, not when you were there for the Passion Play--four
years earlier.

You took it in with your head then, not with your heart. Old traditions
were too strong, I suppose, and you had not made up the last little bit
of your mind, to be true to the convictions that had come to you through
your prayers for light.

And so you have gone on, see-sawing to and fro, not really believing the
old orthodox ideas, but not courageously sweeping them away for
yourself. So although the key was in your hands, you have not used it
until now. You have given me the key, and I have been allowed, as _my_
New Year's gift, to fit it in the door.

This is how Jesus Christ has stood so long at the door of _your_ heart
and knocked. He could only enter through the one door--namely, _that one
opened in the highest point of your spiritual realisation_. I see now
that He comes in at that door in each soul, and, as spiritual evolution
unfolds in each heart, so is the special position of that door shifted;
but the fact of His presence is the vital o