hildren. And for them Jesus' consciousness of
God becomes _authoritative_. It is not that they consider Him in
possession of secret sources of information inaccessible to them, but
that, incomparably more expert, He has penetrated farther and more
surely into the unseen, and they trustfully follow Him. He does not lord
it over them as servants, but leads them as His friends. "Man," says
Keats, in a remark which illustrates Jesus' method with His disciples,
"Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbor."
He, who of old did not strive nor cry aloud, still so quietly gives
those who obey Him His attitude towards God, that they scarcely realize
how much they owe Him. Only here and there a discerning follower, like
Luther, is aware how all-important is the contribution that comes
through a conscious sharing of Christ's revelation, "Whosoever loses
Christ, all faiths (of the Pope, the Jews, the Turks, the common rabble)
become one faith."

And when once Jesus is authoritative for a man, He is the _supreme_
religious authority. A tolerant Roman, like Alexander Severus, set
statues of Apollonius, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, "and others of that
sort," in his lararium; and many today are inclined to make a similar
religious combination. Where Christ is concerned, there can be for His
followers no other "of that sort." We cherish every discovery of the
Divine by any saint of any faith which does not conflict with the
revelation of Jesus; but to those who have found Him the Way to the
Father, His consciousness of God is decisive. In the margin of his copy
of Bacon's _Essays_, William Blake wrote opposite some statement of that
worldly-wiseman, "This is certain: if what Bacon says is true, what
Christ says is false." A loyal Christian must set every opinion he meets
as clearly in the light of his Lord's mind, and choose accordingly his
course in the seen and in the unseen.

When through Jesus we are in fellowship with His God, Jesus Himself
becomes to us _the revelation of God_. The Deity to whom we are led
through His faith discloses Himself to us in Jesus' character. What we
call Divine, as we worship it in One whom we picture in the heavens or
indwelling within us, we discover at our side in Jesus; and if we are
impelled to speak of the Deity of the Father, when we characterize our
highest inspirations from the unseen, we cannot do less than speak of
the Deity of the Son, through whom in the seen these sam