m, as we name it
now, was but the primitive expression of the principle which is central
in all forms of religious faith, that man and the universe are in some
deepest sense at one, and that man's closest approach to the secret of
the universe lies through his own noblest development. That is one way
of saying what the Jew felt when his imagination gave to the sternest
command and the highest promise the sanction, "Thus saith the Lord."

The Hebrew religion was wrought out under constant pressure of disaster.
It was the religion of a proud, brave people, who were constantly held in
subjection to foreign conquerors. Hence came a quality of intense
hostility to these tyrannical foes, and also a constant appeal to the
Divine Power which seemed often to conceal itself. Hence--and from that
sorrowful lot of the individual which often matches this national
tragedy--hence comes the passionate, pleading, poignant quality through
which the Old Testament has always spoken to the struggling and
suffering,--with gleams of hope, the more intense from the clouds through
which they shine.

The note of the New Testament is exultant. There is keen sense of
present evil, endurance, struggle; but there is a deeper sense of a great
deliverance already begun and to be perfected in the future. The heart
of this new energy, joy, and hope is love for a human yet celestial
friend. This love was awakened by a personality of extraordinary
nobility and attractiveness. The personal affection inspired imagination
and ideality to their highest flights. Its original object became
invested with superhuman traits and elevated to a deity. To trace with
certainty and minuteness the historic lineaments of the real man is not
altogether possible; but the essential truth concerning him is
sufficiently plain.

The biographies which we possess of Jesus were written from thirty to a
hundred years after his death. In these records memory and imagination
are intimately blended. On the one hand, the power and loftiness of his
character and words stamped certain traits unmistakably and indelibly on
the minds of his followers. But on the other hand, he was so suggestive
and inspiring--there were among his disciples natures so susceptible,
responsive, yet untrained, and their community was soon fused in such a
contagion of passionate feeling unchecked by reason--that the seeds of
his words and acts fruited in a rich growth of imagination, which blent