e primordial being. Fundamentally we are all one in this
eternal Christ. This is the most difficult statement of all to make
clear, for the average westerner cannot grasp it; it is different from
his ordinary way of looking at things. The best way of demonstrating
it, as I have already shown, is to draw attention to the fact that
Christian orthodoxy has all along been affirming the mystic union
between Christ and the soul, and that the limited earthly consciousness
of Jesus did not prevent Him from being really and truly God. Why
should we not speak in a similar way about any other human
consciousness? If we could only get men to do so habitually and
sincerely, it would be the greatest gain to religion that could
possibly be imagined. In the third chapter I have pointed out that
psychological science is doing much to help us toward this realisation.
We are beginning to see, however hard it may be to understand it, that
our limited individual consciousness is no barrier to the true
identification of the lesser with the larger self. What Christian
doctrine, therefore, has been affirming of Jesus for hundreds of years
past is receiving impressive confirmation from modern science and is
being seen to be true of every human being--that is, the lesser and the
larger are one, however little the earthly consciousness may be able to
grasp the fact. To me this is a most helpful and inspiring truth, one
of the most important that has ever found a place in Christian thought;
it elucidates much that would otherwise be obscure. It enables us to
see how the human and divine were blended in Jesus without making Him
essentially different from the rest of the human race; it enables us to
realise our own true origin and to believe in the salvability of every
soul that has ever come to moral consciousness. If this truth will not
lift a man toward the higher life, I do not know one that will. It is
the truth implied in all redemptive effort that has ever been made, and
in every message that has ever gripped conscience and heart; it is, as
the Nicene creed has it, "the taking of the manhood into God."

+The preeminence of Jesus.+--Lest anyone should think that this
position involves in the slightest degree the diminution of the
religious value and the moral preeminence of Jesus, let me say that it
does the very opposite. Nothing can be higher than the highest, and
the life of Jesus was the undimmed revelation of the highest. Fait