gives it that men may live through the ages and grow to the measure of
His own stature. Truly are we clothed in Him, first materially and then
spiritually. He sacrificed Himself to bring many sons into glory, and He
is with us always, even to the end of the age.

The crucifixion of Christ, then, is part of the great kosmic sacrifice,
and the allegorical representation of this in the physical Mysteries,
and the sacred symbol of the crucified man in space, became materialised
into an actual death by crucifixion, and a crucifix bearing a dying
human form; then this story, now the story of a man, was attached to the
Divine Teacher, Jesus, and became the story of His physical death, while
the birth from a Virgin, the danger-encircled infancy, the resurrection
and ascension, became also incidents in His human life. The Mysteries
disappeared, but their grandiose and graphic representations of the
kosmic work of the Logos encircled and uplifted the beloved figure of
the Teacher of Judaea, and the kosmic Christ of the Mysteries, with the
lineaments of the Jesus of history, thus became the central Figure of
the Christian Church.

But even this was not all; the last touch of fascination is added to the
Christ-story by the fact that there is another Christ of the Mysteries,
close and dear to the human heart--the Christ of the human Spirit, the
Christ who is in every one of us, is born and lives, is crucified, rises
from the dead, and ascends into heaven, in every suffering and
triumphant "Son of Man."

The life-story of every Initiate into the true, the heavenly Mysteries,
is told in its salient features in the Gospel biography. For this
reason, S. Paul speaks as we have seen[211] of the birth of the Christ
in the disciple, and of His evolution and His full stature therein.
Every man is a potential Christ, and the unfolding of the Christ-life
in a man follows the outline of the Gospel story in its striking
incidents, which we have seen to be universal, and not particular.

There are five great Initiations in the life of a Christ, each one
marking a stage in the unfolding of the Life of Love. They are given
now, as of old, and the last marks the final triumph of the Man who has
developed into Divinity, who has transcended humanity, and has become a
Saviour of the world.

Let us trace this life-story, ever newly repeated in spiritual
experience, and see the Initiate living out the life of the Christ.

At the first great Initi