ut it consists in
penetrating more deeply into these, and feeling more of their power and
their grasp. All Euclid is in the definitions and axioms and postulates
at the beginning. All our books are the letters of the alphabet. And
progress consists, not in advancing beyond, but in sinking into, that
initial truth, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'

I might say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of
the old Christ--viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the
complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It
has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate,
rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. The conclusions to
be drawn from the simple Gospel truth, the presuppositions on which it
rests, require all the efforts of all the Church through all the ages,
and transcend them all. And I venture to say, though it may sound like
unsupported dogma, that for this generation's questionings, social,
moral, and political, the answer is to be found in Him. He, and He only,
will interpret each generation to itself, and will meet its clamant
needs. There is none other for the world to-day but the old Christ with
the new aspect which the new conditions require.

Did it ever strike you how remarkable it is, and, as it seems to me, of
how great worth as an argument for the truth of Christianity it is, that
Jesus Christ comes to this, as to every generation, with the air of
belonging to it? Think of the difference between the aspect which a
Plato or a Socrates presents to the world to-day, and the aspect which
that Lord presents. You do not need to strip anything off Him. He
committed Himself to no statements which the progress of thought or
knowledge has exploded. He stands before the world to-day fitting its
needs as closely as He did those of the men of His own generation. The
old Christ is the new Christ.

III. Lastly, in the Christian life the old commandment is perpetually
new.

'Which thing is true ... in you.' That is to say, 'the commandment which
ye received at the beginning,' when ye received Christ as Saviour, has
in itself a power of adapting itself to all new conditions as they may
emerge, and will be felt increasingly to grow stringent, and
increasingly to demand more entire conformity, and increasingly to sweep
its circle round the whole of human life. For this is the result of all
obedience, that the conception of duty be