something which we may acknowledge as a rule of life, and which may
satisfy our inextinguishable longings after the unseen and eternal. It
is true that such a religion presupposes Christianity, to which it owes
its best and noblest features, and that, as far as we can see, it is
inconceivable if Christianity had not first been. Still, we may say
that alchemy preceded chemistry, and was not the more true for being
the step to what is true. But what we cannot say of such a religion is
that it takes the place of Christianity, and is such a religion as
Christianity has been and claims to be. There must ever be all the
difference in the world between a religion which is or professes to be
a revelation, and one which cannot be called such. For a revelation is
a direct work and message of God; but that which is the result of a
process and progress of rinding out the truth by the experience of
ages, or of correcting mistakes, laying aside superstitions and
gradually reducing the gross mass of belief to its essential truth, is
simply on a level with all other human knowledge, and, as it is about
the unseen, can never be verified. If there has been no revelation,
there may be religious hopes and misgivings, religious ideas or dreams,
religious anticipations and trust; but the truth is, there cannot be a
religion in the world. Much less can there be any such thing as
Christianity. It is only when we look at it vaguely in outline, without
having before our mind what it is in fact and in detail, that we can
allow ourselves to think so. There is no transmuting its refractory
elements into something which is not itself; and it is nothing if it is
not primarily a direct message from God. Limit as we may the manner of
this communication, still there remains what makes it different from
all other human possessions of truth, that it was a direct message. And
that, to whatever extent, involves all that is involved in the idea of
miracles. It is, as Mr. Mozley says, inconceivable without miracles.

If, then, a person of evident integrity and loftiness of character
rose into notice in a particular country and community eighteen
centuries ago, who made these communications about himself--that
he had existed before his natural birth, from all eternity, and
before the world was, in a state of glory with God; that he was
the only-begotten Son of God; that the world itself had been made
by him; that he had, however, com