forms to clothe the ineffable experience of
Mary and the disciples. For us, the story of outward events--the visible
form, the eating of bread and fish, the conversations, the floating up
into the clouds--all this fades away as a mirage. The reality below this
symbol--the sense of the human friend's continued and higher life--this
abides and renews itself; not as an isolated historic fact, but as an
instance and counterpart of the message which in every age comes to the
bereaved heart--of a love greater than loss, a life in which death is
swallowed up.

The religion of the followers of Jesus became a centring of every
affection, obligation, and hope, in him.

For the first few years all this was merged in the eager expectation of
his return. While this lasted in its fullness, even memory was far less
to them than hope. They did not attempt any complete records of his
earthly life,--what need of that, when the life was so soon to be
resumed? The bride on the eve of her marriage is not reading her old
love-letters,--she is looking to the morrow.

That first eager flush had already passed when the earliest gospels were
written. By that time hope had begun to prop its wavering confidence, by
looks turned back even to a remote past. Hence the constant appeals to
the supposed predictions of the Old Testament; hence even the imagining
of special events in the life of Jesus to fulfill those predictions.

The Old Testament as conceived by the writers of the New is fantastically
unlike the original writings. The Evangelists found Messianic prophecies
everywhere. The writers of the Epistles, Paul and the rest, dealt with
ceremonies and histories as a quarry out of which to hew whatever
allegory or argument suited their purpose.

In Luke's Gospel we first see fully displayed the idea of Christ which
took possession of the common mind, and has largely held it ever
since,--a personal Savior,--a gracious, merciful, all-powerful deliverer.
It is a gospel of the imagination and the heart--inspired by the actual
Jesus, but half-created by ardent, adoring imagination.

This conception grew up side by side with Paul's. It is far closer to
the popular mind and heart than Paul's idea,--his was philosophic and
metaphysic; this is pictorial. Paul has been studied by theologians, but
the Gospels have given the Christ of the common people.

The early church was divided into two parties, of which one was led by
Paul, who stood