flame. We linger and return to such men as Boehme,
Fichte, Romini-Serbati, Froebel, Swedenborg. We delight in the few great
and isolated names of Greece and Rome that are above style. We turn
continually to the perpetual fountains of India, but seldom to Egypt.

We love the prophets of the Old Testament, but despise chosen peoples at
every appearance; we delight in the lineage of the Messiah; we are
stimulated by the Hebrew literature, by its symbolism, its songs and
precepts, the Oriental colour of it, the hierarchy of its saints, the
strange splendour of its women, but as a book of devotion its chief
significance is that of a huge vessel prepared for the coming of a
Master.

The New Testament is our first book. Manhandled and perverted as it has
been by early writers, who still wanted Moses and laboured under the
misconception that Jesus was expounding the doctrines of Moses afresh,
instead of refuting many of them--yet the New Testament stands highest
above all hands pointing heavenward.

In the case of the teacher here, it was not the so-called orthodoxy that
accomplished this allegiance to the New Testament. Modern churches drove
him forth into the Farther East. It was the return from Patanjali and
the Vedas and much of that excellent and ancient wisdom of the Earlier
Arrival, that gave him a fresh surface for understanding the pilgrimage
and the passion of Jesus.

Our own Tolstoi has done much to restore the Son of Mary to a sceptical
generation. To us Tolstoi's great work is not through the vehicle of the
novel. Though comparisons are everywhere questionable, it seems to us
that the Russian's task on the later Scriptures is as significant as
Luther's. Certainly he has prepared them to stand the more searching and
penetrative gaze of the coming generation. Many of the new voices rise
to declare that it is doubtful if there really was an historic Jesus.
Still the man matters less than his influence. His story is emphatically
in the world; the spirit of it lives above all dogma and vulgarity,
even above nationalism. It is the breath of Brotherhood and Compassion.
It is nearer to us and less complex than the story of the Buddha.

Every such coming heightens the voltage of spiritual power in the world.
The greatest stories of the world are the stories of such comings. Of
first importance in the education of children is the institution of an
ideal of the imminence of great helpers, the Compassionates. Children
be