anything to writing. We have broken reports of many of his addresses, and very fragmentary memoranda of his conversations and disputes, but no provision of a literary kind seems to have been made to secure permanence. Anything more fugitive, apparently, than the words and works of Christ, it is impossible to find no hired scribes report the utterances or chronicle the deeds of this wonderful Man; he founds no library, leaves no chronicles to be hidden in secure places, but works out his twelve hours, and then passes into rest. We come to no sign of permanence, until we receive the promise of the Holy Ghost; he was to quicken the recollection, as well as to disclose further aspects of the truth. The memory was not to be left unaided; a great light was to be held over all the way in which the disciples had walked, so that they might see the minutest detail, and tell or write their story with all the clearness and certitude of personal observation.

The written Word is a repertory of facts, a revelation of doctrines, and a standard of appeal upon all questions to which it bears any relation. The only interpreter of this Word is the Holy Ghost, and he operates through the consciousness of the reader: it is not a Word superimposed upon man, but a word in harmony with all that is divine in human nature, and therefore having power to carry the entire conviction and sympathy of all who read without prejudice. Upon these principles the subsequent inquiry will be conducted.

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THE

CHAPTER IV.

INAUGURATION.

HE measure of consciousness is the measure of

THE

life. The life of intelligent beings is not merely a question of years; lapse of time may not increase vitality; life is to be measured by the sensitiveness and enlightenment of consciousness, so that over-consciousness may be one meaning of precocity or prematurity of manhood. The first public intimation of consciousness of his great position, on the part of Christ, if we except the answer which he made to his mother, is found in immediate connection with his baptism. When John remonstrated with him, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" he answered, "Suffer it to be so now.” There is here clearly personal consciousness of his identity as the long-announced Man who was to be at once Son and Lord of humankind. At that moment he knew himself. The fire which had been in him from the beginning shot up into a bright flame, which John saw, and which all who were afar off were to see. Up to that time, in all probability, Christ was not fully conscious of his Messiahship. The poor frail flesh which he had inherited from a depraved race could not have borne the presence of full consciousness for thirty years: when it did come, it con

sumed him in as many months. He had but three years of avowed battle. Such a man could never do his work with indifference. upon his life. No man ever gave so much to time, or ever exacted so much in return. To assume full consciousness on the part of Christ during the years of his obscurity seems to separate him too widely from man, by reducing his humanity to a minimum; but to

Every moment was a strain

assume that he " grew " in consciousness, as he " grew

in favor with God and man," is to bring him into close fellowship with the weakest of his followers. We cannot afford to contract in the least degree the amplitude of Christ's manhood; it is upon that side particularly that he belongs to us; it is as the ladder reaching unto heaven whereby men may ascend. By so much as he was human he was limited, during his obscurity, in consciousness; by so much as he was divine, his full consciousness overbore his humanity. All men who have done any notable work in the world have felt the consciousness of its importance, as a fire in the bones. They could not languidly dream of it, nor contemplate it from a hazy and mellowing distance. They have hasted unto the battle; they have said, "I am straitened until it be accomplished." Such a consciousness makes men die young. It carries the soul into an agony of passion. It drives the blood along the channels with an urgency which greatly distresses nature, and strains the intellectual nerve until the brain sees strange lights, and often trembles for its own safety. Only men of strong natures know what is meant by this lavish expenditure of life—this willingness to taste death for every man.

Common life supplies the example of consciousness in the matter of mutual affection. Wisely and mercifully, this has been made a matter of growth. Human nature would be altogether overdriven did this consciousness set in fully during the period of education and discipline. From the general kindness and simplicity of childhood we advance until the heart begins to individualize its sentiments, to concentrate its energies; by and by there seems to be but one life in all the world, and then begins the consuming passion of perfect love. Human lives grow gradually up to this. To so great a passion they must have come by wisely graduated degrees, or it would have rent and destroyed them. Still, all through there has been a consciousness of love, and in all the simple trust and generosity of young affection there have been hints of a great possibility, which only time and circumstances could develop. And this full love means, if need be, sacrifice, cross, death! All love is ready for the thorns and prepared for the slaughter; only by so much as it is so ready is it worthy of the name of love. It may not be driven so far along the line as these things lie, but these things do lie in the line of pure, selfoblivious affection. Man is never so near the cross as when he is in the highest mood of love. To misanthropy, to all narrow-heartedness and self-worship, the cross must be the sum of all horrors; they stand on different planes, they speak languages mutually unknown; but the cross is the very next thing to love: there is but a step between them!

This may illustrate in some degree the growth of consciousness in Jesus Christ. The three years of his

heart-consuming ministry were backed by thirty years. of quiet and thoughtful life. In such backing lies the strength of all great workers. Nothing consumes like love; how soon, then, must he be consumed who did nothing but love! The brevity of his life must have some meaning. Three years as reckoned by human tables are but a span; there must have been in those three years a fire which burned fiercely, and made them unlike any other three years in all human history.

This view of Christ's consciousness detracts in no degree from Christ's deity; rather it throws into bolder and more peculiar relief the elements which contradistinguished him from all others, while it retains him amongst us as the Man Christ Jesus. The horizon seems gradually but surely to have widened, until he who "" came to his own" saw "all men coming to him," and he who was "lifted up" drew all nations to his cross. This might have been, would have been, too much for the youth in his humble home at Nazareth. All was getting in readiness for the dove that was to mark the opening of the new era. There was to be a descent upon him a special point of concurrence which was to signalize the quickening of perfect consciousness. It is to that concurrent point that we have now to look.

Christ passed, so to speak, through two gates, the one strait, the other straiter, respectively named Baptism and Temptation. The inaugural processes are characterized by the same mystery that has overshadowed us all along. They are congruous with all that we have seen in the foretelling and in the birth.