on, and in particular conclude that, while
Jesus lived a wonderful life for his own day, that was a long time ago
and surely we must be outgrowing him.

That this attitude is critically perilous to the integrity of the
Christian movement will at once be obvious to any one whose own
spiritual experience is centered in Christ. From the beginning until
now the faith of Christian people has been primarily directed, not to a
set of abstract principles, nor to a set of creedal definitions, but to
a Person. Christians have been people believing in Jesus Christ. This
abiding element has put unity into Christian history. The stream of
Christian thought and progress has never been twice the same, yet for
all that it has been a continuous stream and not an aimless, sprawling
flood, and this unity and consistency have existed for one reason
chiefly: the influence of the personality of Jesus. Folk may have been
Romanists or Protestants, ritualists or Quakers, reactionaries or
progressives, but still they have believed in Jesus. His personality
has been the sun around which even in their differences they have swung
like planets in varying orbits. Take the personality of Jesus out of
Christian history and what you have left is chaos.

Moreover, it is the personality of Jesus that has been the source of
Christianity's transforming influence on character. Ask whence has
come that power over the spirits of men which we recognize as
Christianity at its mightiest and best, and the origin must be sought,
not primarily in our theologies or rubrics or churches, but in the
character and spirit of Jesus. He himself is the central productive
source of power in Christianity. We have come so to take this for
granted that we do not half appreciate the wonder of it. This
personality, who so has mastered men, was born sixty generations ago in
a small village in an outlying Roman province, and until he was thirty
years of age he lived and worked as a carpenter among his fellow
townsfolk, attracting no wide consideration. Then for three years or
less he poured out his life in courageous teaching and sacrificial
service, amid the growing hatred and hostility of his countrymen, until
he was put to death by crucifixion "because he stirred up the people."
Anatole France, in one of his stories, represents Pilate in his later
years as trying to remember the trial and death of Jesus and being
barely able to recall it. That incident had been so m