insisting upon between principles
and rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to the
faith in our Lord's Divine Nature was by first realising His Human
Life. But the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives way
on closer examination before broad and characteristic features of an
entirely different significance. That one which at first arrests
attention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from the
common Liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the first
page of the book to its last line the work of Christ is viewed, not
simply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction of
certain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, the
delivery of Divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but as
the call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society of
men. The subject, of investigation is not merely the character and
history of the Person, but the Person as connected with His work.
Christ is regarded not simply in Himself or in His teaching, as the
Founder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but as
the Author of a Divine Society, the Body which is called by His Name,
the Christian Church Universal, a real and visible company of men,
which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it has
existed since His time, marked by His badges, governed by His laws, and
working out His purpose. The writer finds the two joined in fact, and
he finds them also joined in the recorded history of Christ's plan. The
book might almost be described as the beginning of a new _De Civitate
Dei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries and
from the point of view of our own generation. This is one remarkable
peculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given to
the severe side of the Person and character of whom he writes, and what
is even more observable, the way in which both the severity and the
gentleness are apprehended and harmonised.

We are familiar with the attempts to resolve the Christianity of the
New Testament into philanthropy; and, on the other hand, writers like
Mr. Carlyle will not let us forget that the world is as dark and evil
as the Bible draws it. This writer feels both in one. No one can show
more sympathy with enlarged and varied ideas of human happiness, no one
has connected them more fearlessly with Christian principles, or
claimed from those principles more u