out everything else." A
man builds up a world of thought for himself--we all do--a scheme of
things; and to a man with a thought-out view of the world, it may
come with an enormous shock to realize this incredible idea, this
incredible truth, of God in Christ. Those who have dwelt most on it,
and value it most, may be most apt to understand what I mean by
calling it incredible. Think of it. It takes your breath away. If
that is true, does not the whole plan of my life fall to pieces--my
whole scheme of things for the world, my whole body of intellectual
conceptions? And the man to whom this happens may well say he is
afraid. He is afraid, because it is so strange; because, when you
realize it, it takes you into a new world; you cannot grasp it. A
man whose instinct is for truth may hesitate--will hesitate about a
conception like this. "Is it possible," he will ask himself, "that I
am deluded?" And another thought rises up again and again, "Where
will it take me?" We can understand a man being afraid in that way.
I do not think we have much right _not_ to be afraid. If it is the
incarnation of God, what right have we not to be afraid? Then, of
course, a man will say that to follow Christ involves too much in
the way of sacrifice. He is afraid on lower grounds, afraid of his
family, afraid for his career; he hesitates. To that man the thing
will be unintelligible. The experience of St. Augustine, revealed in
his "Confessions", is illuminative here. He had intellectual
difficulties in his approach to the Christian position, but the rate
of progress became materially quicker when he realized that the
moral difficulties came first, that a practical step had to be
taken. So with us--to decide the issue, how far are we prepared to
go with Jesus? Have we realized the experience behind his thought?
The rule which we laid down at the beginning holds. How far are we
prepared to go in sharing that experience? That will measure our
right to understand him. Once again, in the plainest language, are
we prepared to follow, as the disciples followed, afraid as they
were?

Where is he going? Where is he taking them? They wonder; they do not
know; they are uneasy. But when all is said, the figure on the road
ahead of them, waiting for them now and looking round, is the Jesus
who loves them and whom they love.

And one can imagine the feeling rising in the mind of one and
another of them: "I don't know where he is going, or where he is