have
never in the worst times ceased altogether to teach these truths; and
now they more and more tend to constitute the essence of Christianity
as it is to-day--all the more so on account of the Church's gradual
shuffling off of so many adventitious ideas and practices which were at
one time associated with them. Christianity is and remains the only
one of the great historical Religions which has taught and does teach
these great truths in all their fullness.[2] These considerations
would by themselves be sufficient to put Christianity in an absolutely
unique position among the Religions of Mankind.

I have so far been regarding our Lord Jesus Christ simply as a teacher
of religious and ethical truth. I think it is of fundamental
importance that we should _begin_ by regarding him in this light.
{155} It was in this light that he first presented himself to his
fellow-countrymen--even before (in all probability) he claimed to be
the fulfiller of the Messianic ideal which had been set before them by
the prophets of their race. And I could not, without a vast array of
quotation, give you a sufficient impression of the prominence of this
aspect of his work and personality among the earlier Greek Fathers.
Even after the elaborate doctrines of Catholic Christianity had begun
to be developed, it was still primarily as the supremely inspired
Teacher that Jesus was most often thought of. When the early
Christians thought of him as the incarnate Logos or Reason of God, to
teach men divine truth was still looked upon as the supreme function of
the Logos and the purpose of his indwelling in the historical Jesus.
But from the first Jesus appealed to men as much more than a teacher.
It is one of the distinctive peculiarities of religious and ethical
knowledge that it is intimately connected with character: religious and
moral teaching of the highest kind is in a peculiar degree inseparable
from the personality of the teacher. Jesus impressed his
contemporaries, and he has impressed successive ages as having not only
set before man the highest religious and moral ideal, but as having in
a unique manner realized that ideal in his own life. Even the word
'example' {156} does not fully express the impression which he made on
his followers, or do justice to the inseparability of his personality
from his teaching. In the religious consciousness of Christ men saw
realized the ideal relation of man not merely to his fellow-man but