s
followers, and it stands in vivid contrast with the feelings men
have toward God in the other religions. Christianity is the religion
of joy. The New Testament is full of it.

We know the general character of Jesus' attitude to God, his feeling
for God, his sense of God's nearness. How immediate his knowledge of
God is, how intimate! Of course, here, as everywhere, his teaching
has such an occasional character--or else the records of it are so
fragmentary--that we must not press the absence of system in it; and
yet, I think, it would be right to say that Jesus puts before us no
system of God, but rather suggests a great exploration, an intimacy
with the slow and sure knowledge that intimacy gives. He has no
definition of God,[21] but he assumes God, lives on the basis of
God, interprets God; and God is discovered in his acts and his
relations. He said to Peter, in effect--for the familiar phrase
comes to this in modern English: "You think like a man; you don't
think like God" (Mark 8:33). Elsewhere he contrasts God's thoughts
with man's--their outlooks are so different "that which is highly
esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15;
the Greek words are very interesting). In other words, he would have
men see all things as God sees them. That we do not so see them,
remains the weak spot in our thinking. What Luther said to Erasmus
is true of most of us: "Your thoughts concerning God are too human."
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall _see_ God," said
Jesus (Matt. 5:8), and throughout he emphasizes that the vision of
God depends on likeness to God--it is love and a glowing purity that
give that faculty, rather than any power of intellect apart from
them. Jesus brings men back to the ultimate fact. Our views are too
short and too narrow. He would have us face God, see him and realize
him--think in the terms of God, look at things from God's point of
view, live in God and with God. In modern phrase, he breaks up our
dogmatism and puts us at a universal point of view to see things
over again in a new and true perspective.

How and where did he begin himself? Whence came his consciousness of
God, his gift for recognizing God? We do not know. The story of his
growth, his inward growth, is almost unrevealed to us. We are told
that he learnt "by the things which he suffered" (Heb. 5:8), and
that he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and
man" (Luke 2:52). Where does a