estament. The Gospels tell
the story of the life of the Founder of Christianity, clearly enough in
the main outlines, and embalm many of the words and deeds of the Son of
Man. The other writings of the New Testament illustrate the working of the
thought and spirit of the Christ in the Church bodying around Him through
the growth of a century. In them we see that the long cherished ideal of
Israel, an Ethical and Universal Religion, had at last incarnated itself
in The Master whose plans laid the foundation of this new Order; into
which men were coming from the east and from the west, and from the north
and from the south, and were sitting down in the Kingdom of God.

The high-water mark of religion in human history is recorded in these
writings. To enter into the spirit of these writings is to feel the force
of the free, full tides of ethical and spiritual life which rose, as never
before nor since, in the dawning day of Christianity. The flow of such a
force within the individual soul and through society has been the power
of the New Testament in Christendom.

8. _This organic growth of a national religion into a catholic ideal, not
without parallels elsewhere, is, however unique in respect to the
conditions for a truly Universal Religion._

The scene of this evolution is not the heart of the East, as in Buddhism,
but the meeting point of East and West. Palestine is the race centre of
the earth. Camels unload in Jerusalem the goods laden upon them in the
seats of the most ancient empires; and on her pebbly beaches the
Mediterranean rolls, bearing the commerce of Europe. Behind Judea lies the
past, before it opens the future. Its Race-Man came at the epoch when,
first in history, the East and West were brought together under one empire
and opened to the free interchange of thought. And when we analyze the
religion of the Christ, grown in this central land and coming to the birth
in this central period, we find that it holds, alone on earth, the
elements of each race-religion in well proportioned combination.

No eastern religion, Buddhism not excepted, appears to contain conceptions
that satisfy the western mind. The religion of the Christ, however can be
shown to hold whatever ideas and ideals make vital the great
race-religions of the East. It is as many sided as humanity, and presents
a family face to every people. It takes up the ideas and ideals of other
religions, disengages and deposits whatever in them i