mark in his ministry that the lowest and the poorest, the most desperate
and the most degraded, feel in approaching him no wall of separation,
feel as they throng around him welcome and not repulsion; for there
radiates from him a love that understands and that can therefore never
wish to repel. However low the soul may be, he never feels the
Christ-Soul as standing above him but rather as standing beside him,
treading with human feet the ground he also treads; yet as filled with
some strange uplifting power that raises him upwards and fills him also
with new impulse and fresh inspiration.

Thus he lives and labours, a true Saviour of men, until the time comes
when he must learn another lesson, losing for awhile his consciousness
of that divine Life of which his own has been becoming ever more and
more the expression. And this lesson is that the true centre of divine
Life lies within and not without. The Self has its centre within each
human soul--truly is "the centre everywhere," for Christ is _in_ all,
and God in Christ--and no embodied life, nothing "out of the
Eternal"[233] can help him in his direst need. He has to learn that the
true unity of Father and Son is to be found within and not without, and
this lesson can only come in uttermost isolation, when he feels forsaken
by the God outside himself. As this trial approaches, he cries out to
those who are nearest to him to watch with him through his hour of
darkness; and then, by the breaking of every human sympathy, the failing
of every human love, he finds himself thrown back on the life of the
divine Spirit, and cries out to his Father, feeling himself in conscious
union with Him, that the cup may pass away. Having stood alone, save for
that divine Helper, he is worthy to face the last ordeal, where the God
without him vanishes, and only the God within is left. "My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me?" rings out the bitter cry of startled love
and fear. The last loneliness descends on him, and he feels himself
forsaken and alone. Yet never is the Father nearer to the Son than at
the moment when the Christ-Soul feels himself forsaken, for as he thus
touches the lowest depth of sorrow, the hour of his triumph begins to
dawn. For now he learns that he must himself become the God to whom he
cries, and by feeling the last pang of separation he finds the eternal
unity, he feels the fount of life is within, and knows himself eternal.

None can become fully a Saviour