tice to Jesus' consciousness of Himself, of His unique
relation to God, of His all-important mission to men, as the critically
investigated documents disclose it. Historically, they do not give us a
Figure sufficiently significant for faith to account for the Christian
Church; scientifically, their portraits do not long prove satisfactory,
and are soon discarded on further investigation of the facts; and
religiously, they do not appeal to Christian believers as adequate to
explain their own life in Christ.

It is not surprising that these attempts have failed. The historic Jesus
did not make the same impression upon everybody who met Him; men's
judgments of Him varied with their spiritual capacities, and their
spiritual capacities affected what He could do for them. There is enough
historicity in the narratives to convince sober historians, whatever
their faith or unfaith, that Jesus existed as a man among men, and that
He was conscious of a relationship to God and a significance for men
which transcend anything in ordinary human experience. It requires
something more than sound historic judgment to see in Jesus what He saw
in Himself, or what Peter saw in Him when he called Him "the Christ of
God." We can never prove to any man on the basis of historical research
alone that the portrait of Jesus in the gospels correctly represents the
_religious_ impression of the historic Jesus. When we deal with
anything religious, a subjective element enters and determines the
conclusion, exactly as the artistic spirit alone can appreciate that
which has to do with art. The gospels as appreciations appeal only to
the similarly appreciative. We can show that the earliest stratum of the
gospel tradition, according to the most rigorous methods of critical
analysis, gives us a Jesus who possessed a meaning for His followers
akin to the meaning the Jesus of our four gospels possessed for the
Church of the First Century, and possesses for the Church of our day.
Only as Jesus comes to have a supreme worth to any man can he believe
that the estimate of their Master in the minds of the first disciples
can be the accurate impression of a real man.

When, then, we speak of the Christ of history, we mean not the figure of
Jesus as reproduced by scientific research apart from Christian faith,
but the Christ of the four gospels, whose figure corresponds to the
religious impression received from the historic Jesus by His earliest
followers. _Live