a meaningless and mocking figure. But a mediator who was chiefly
like ourselves would be a contradiction in terms!

So we come back again to the old problem. Man needs some proof that he
who knows that he is more than dust can meet with that other life from
whose star his speck has been derived. Something has got to give him
powerful reinforcement for this supreme effort of will, of faith. If
only he could know that he and it ever have met in the fields of time
and space, then he would be saved. For that would give him the will to
believe; that would prove the ultimate; give him the blessed assurance
which heals the wounds of the heart. Then he would have power to
surrender. Then he would no longer fear the gulf, he would walk out
onto it and know that as he walked he was with God.

Some such reasoning as this ought to make clear the place that Jesus
holds in Christian preaching and why we call Him Saviour and why
salvation comes for us who are of His spiritual lineage, through Him.
Of course it is true that Jesus shows to all discerning eyes what man
may be. But that is not the chief secret of His power; that is not
why churches are built to Him and His cross still fronts, defeated
but unconquerable, our pagan world. Jesus was more-than-nature and
more-than-human. It is this "other" quality, operative and objectified
in His experience within our world, which gives Him the absoluteness
which makes Him indispensable and precious. The mystery is deepest
here. For here we transfer the antinomy from thought to conduct; from
inner perception to one Being's actual experience. Here, in Him, we
say we see it resolved into its higher synthesis in actual operation.

Here, then, we can almost look into it. Yet when we do gaze, our eyes
dazzle, our minds swerve, it is too much. It is not easy, indeed, at
the present time it seems to be impossible to reconcile the Christ
of history with the Christ of experience. Yet there would be neither
right nor reason in saying that the former was more of a reality
than the latter. And all the time the heart from which great thoughts
arise, "the heart which has its reasons of which the mind knows
nothing," says, Here in Him is the consummate quality, the absolute
note of life. Here the impossible has been accomplished. Here the
opposites meet and the contradictions blend. Here is something so
incredible that it is true.

Of course, Jesus is of us and He is ours. That is true and it is
inexpr