on the minds of the
uneducated certain grand classifications of natural events that were
important in themselves, and that lent themselves to moral instruction.
Those who endorse this view form a well-defined school to which belong
many men of high education and strong intelligence, and round them
gather crowds of the less instructed, who emphasise with crude
vehemence the more destructive elements in their pronouncements. This
school is opposed by that of the believers in orthodox Christianity, who
declare that the whole story of Jesus is history, unadulterated by
legend or myth. They maintain that this history is nothing more than the
history of the life of a man born some nineteen centuries ago in
Palestine, who passed through all the experiences set down in the
Gospels, and they deny that the story has any significance beyond that
of a divine and human life. These two schools stand in direct
antagonism, one asserting that everything is legend, the other declaring
that everything is history. Between them lie many phases of opinion
generally labelled "freethinking," which regard the life-story as partly
legendary and partly historical, but offer no definite and rational
method of interpretation, no adequate explanation of the complex whole.
And we also find, within the limits of the Christian Church, a large and
ever-increasing number of faithful and devout Christians of refined
intelligence, men and women who are earnest in their faith and
religious in their aspirations, but who see in the Gospel story more
than the history of a single divine Man. They allege--defending their
position from the received Scriptures--that the story of the Christ has
a deeper and more significant meaning than lies on the surface; while
they maintain the historical character of Jesus, they at the same time
declare that THE CHRIST is more than the man Jesus, and has a mystical
meaning. In support of this contention they point to such phrases as
that used by S. Paul: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth
again again until Christ be formed in you";[159] here S. Paul obviously
cannot refer to a historical Jesus, but to some forthputting from the
human soul which is to him the shaping of Christ therein. Again the same
teacher declares that though he had known Christ after the flesh yet
from henceforth he would know him thus no more;[160] obviously implying
that while he recognised the Christ of the flesh--Jesus--there was a
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