ent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of
God?"[166] Truly all men are Gods, in respect to the Spirit within them,
but not in all is the Godhead manifested, as in that well-beloved Son of
the Most High.

To that manifested Presence the name of "the Christ" may rightly be
given, and it was He who lived and moved in the form of the man Jesus
over the hills and plains of Palestine, teaching, healing diseases, and
gathering round Him as disciples a few of the more advanced souls. The
rare charm of His royal love, outpouring from Him as rays from a sun,
drew round Him the suffering, the weary, and the oppressed, and the
subtly tender magic of His gentle wisdom purified, ennobled, and
sweetened the lives that came into contact with His own. By parable and
luminous imagery He taught the uninstructed crowds who pressed around
Him, and, using the powers of the free Spirit, He healed many a disease
by word or touch, reinforcing the magnetic energies belonging to His
pure body with the compelling force of His inner life. Rejected by His
Essene brethren among whom He first laboured--whose arguments against
His purposed life of loving labour are summarised in the story of the
temptation--because he carried to the people the spiritual wisdom that
they regarded as their proudest and most secret treasure, and because
His all-embracing love drew within its circle the outcast and the
degraded--ever loving in the lowest as in the highest the Divine
Self--He saw gathering round Him all too quickly the dark clouds of
hatred and suspicion. The teachers and rulers of His nation soon came to
eye Him with jealousy and anger; His spirituality was a constant
reproach to their materialism, His power a constant, though silent,
exposure of their weakness. Three years had scarcely passed since His
baptism when the gathering storm outbroke, and the human body of Jesus
paid the penalty for enshrining the glorious Presence of a Teacher more
than man.

The little band of chosen disciples whom He had selected as repositories
of His teachings were thus deprived of their Master's physical presence
ere they had assimilated His instructions, but they were souls of high
and advanced type, ready to learn the Wisdom, and fit to hand it on to
lesser men. Most receptive of all was that "disciple whom Jesus loved,"
young, eager, and fervid, profoundly devoted to his Master, and sharing
His spirit of all-embracing love. He represented, t