have to thank Him for. I would in my inmost
self be so closely united with Him that He may live in my spirit and
bear absolute sway in my soul. I will not be ashamed of His Cross and
I will gladly endure the insults which men have directed, and still
often enough direct, against Him and His truth.'

That is the characteristic and dominant note of the more recent
criticism. The almost universal conclusion is that the Perfect Ideal
has been depicted in the Christ of the Gospels, and has been depicted
because the Reality had been seen in Jesus of Nazareth.[8] Is it not
allowable to declare that the writers, let them say what they will
about their rejection of the doctrine of the Church concerning the
Incarnation and the Atonement of Christ, are practically His disciples,
that the ardour of their faith in Him not {195} infrequently puts to
shame the coldness of us who call Him Lord?[9] There is scarcely
extravagance in the assertion that, as we recognise the part which
Strauss and Renan played, and the unconscious help which they rendered,
'we may well say now "_noster_" Strauss and "_noster_" Renan. They
were, in their measure, and, according to their respective abilities,
defenders of the Faith.'[10] While it is possible to lament that among
Christian apologists there are timid surrenders and faithless
forebodings, it is yet more possible to reply that 'Whereas our critics
were at one time infidels and our bitter enemies, they are now proud of
the name of Christian and ready to be the friends, as far as that is
permitted, of every form of orthodoxy in Christianity.'[11]

The language in which, at any rate, they express their conception of
Him is sometimes {196} more devout, more exalted, than the language
which used to be employed by professed apologists. The Hindu Theist,
Protab Chandra Mozoomdar, who stood outside the fold of Christianity,
joyfully proclaimed, 'Christ reigns. As the law of the spirit of
heavenly life, He reigns in the bosom of every believer.... Christ
reigns as the recogniser of Divine humanity in the fallen, the low, and
the despicable, as the healer of the unhappy, the unclean, and the sore
distressed. Reigns He not in the sweet humanity that goes forth to
seek and to save its kin in every land and clime, to teach and preach,
and raise and reclaim, to weep and watch and give repose? He reigns as
sweet patience and sober reason amid the laws and orders of the world;
as the spirit of submi