l operated indeed, but, as it were,
implicitly. The creative effort which produced that against which,
it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail, cannot be
analysed. No architects' designs were furnished for the New
Jerusalem, no committee drew up rules for the Universal
Commonwealth. If in the works of Nature we can trace the
indications of calculation, of a struggle with difficulties, of
precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ's work it may be that the
same indications occur. But these inferior and secondary powers
were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly present in
the manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable work was
done in calmness; before the eyes of men it was noiselessly
accomplished, attracting little attention. Who can describe that
which unites men? Who has entered into the formation of speech
which is the symbol of their union? Who can describe exhaustively
the origin of civil society? He who can do these things can
explain the origin of the Christian Church. For others it must be
enough to say, "the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed." No
man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded
together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard
the chink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended _out of heaven from
God_.

And here we leave this remarkable book. It seems to us one of those
which permanently influence opinion, not so much by argument as such,
as by opening larger views of the familiar and the long-debated, by
deepening the ordinary channels of feeling, and by bringing men back to
seriousness and rekindling their admiration, their awe, their love,
about what they know best. We have not dwelt on minute criticisms about
points to which exception might be taken. We have not noticed even
positions on which, without further explanation, we should more or less
widely disagree. The general scope of it, and the seriousness as well
as the grandeur and power with which the main idea is worked out, seem
to make mere secondary objections intolerable. It is a fragment, with
the disadvantages of a fragment. What is put before us is far from
complete, and it needs to be completed. In part at least an answer has
been given to the question _what_ Christ was; but the question remains,
not less important, and of which the answer is only here foreshadowed,
_who_ He was. But so far