us this readiness, this craving to come | How far more imperative does the neinto contact with life as real as our cessity for this spontaneous unveiling own. We want to penetrate beyond become when the person to be revealed the form to the substance of existence, is not human but divine! Our own and where we are baffled in doing so endeavors either in the field of scienwe fall back unsatisfied. In nature, of tific research or of philosophy can course, we cannot find what we seek, never do more than inform us of God's for all nature is below us. Even in methods; they cannot bring us face to our fellow-man we do not meet with face with God himself. Even that inthe full response that we need, for, ward enlightenment which consists in though our equal, he is yet too re- the gradual growth and expansion of stricted for us. Light to which the eye the religious consciousness, the raising responds is greater than the eye-a and purifying of its conceptions and mightier life than the human can alone aspirations, traceable through the long adequately meet and explain the hu- course of history, would of itself be man. Thus, one consequence of man's insufficient to meet man's need, for it knowing — and yet only partially know- would leave him without an object ing himself is an extraordinary iso- upon which to direct his illuminated lation, felt in varying degrees by vision. A definite, concrete expression varying temperaments, but to some of all that man can understand of God extent by all. There are depths in each man's nature unsuspected by any but himself - nay, what is more awful to him still, there are depths which he himself cannot sound, before which "his mortal nature doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised," and in one way alone can this utter solitude be relieved, and the touch of an all-comprehending and universal sympathy illuminate the mysterious recesses of the ego. It is by the revelation of a personal being to whom no personal life is strange; who, because he knows to the uttermost what is in man, can show man what is in himself, and enable him to understand it; who, although his thoughts are not man's thoughts, nor his ways man's ways, nevertheless meets and interprets the ways and thoughts of man by unveiling his own.

is as needful to him as the subjective development of the spiritual understanding, by which the meaning of such an expression can be grasped ; and the only true response to this need is the God-man, who is at the same time the revelation of God to man and of man to himself as he exists in the divine ideal of manhood. Failing such a manifestation as this there has been no universal, because no personal, revelation of God at all. Man who is made in his image has never been given to see that image, save in broken lights and in disconnected parts. For what he needed was, not only a vague assurance based on subjective experience alone that an indefinable union existed between "the divine" and "the human," but the actual realization of that union in one who should be both God and man, and conseHere, then, lies the necessity for quently able to prove in his own person another revelation than any science that man was made in the image of can make, mirrored forth by a familiar God, in whom we should have a "real and frequent experience; for we are knowledge of God expressed in terms well aware that no personality can ever of humanity." Any interpretation of become known to us by our own un- the "divine humanity of Jesus Christ" aided efforts. If a fellow-man, even which falls short of this, -even one in one with whom we are in daily con- many respects so deep and far-reaching tact, chooses to hide himself from us as that given by Professor Caird in his he can do so. To know a person im-"Evolution of Religion," — does "take plies some act on his part as well as on away that which is the necessary supours; otherwise we may know about him, but we can never know him.

1 Gore's Bampton Lectures, p 117.

port to faith," and does not contain dangerous ground to make an appeal to "all the elements of vital Christianity," the personal experience" of Chrisall the elements in it that have really tians, the following consideration apgiven support to the religious life of pears a sufficient answer: that if it be man in the past." For the "vital true that perfect "self-realization" is elements" of Christianity may be the goal of human discipline and progsummed up in one word, and that word ress, and that a "self-conscious being is Christ not in his teaching, divine cannot know what he really is, or realand inspiring though it be, not in ize his good save in utter self-surrender the sublime and simple records of his to God," then a consensus of the exlife, however great their spiritual perience of selfs, or, as it is more compower, not in the subsequent com- monly called, of " personal experience mentaries on that life, and develop- in the religious consciousness, becomes ment of that teaching found in the of supreme importance; and on no writings of his immediate disciples and point is the consensus of Christian perfollowers, but in himself; for he is not sonal experience so strong as on this of only the way to life, he is the life, the union with Christ. By all Christians very principle of union between God who are such in more than name, in all and man, through whom that union is ages, Christ is felt and more or less realized in us. Regarding the incarna- adequately declared to be their stay, tion in this light, it is brought home to their strength, their support, the one us as "God's eternal word to his crea- who, because their nature is his, untures," reaching through and beyond derstands and enters into its deepest all the boundaries of time. It pre- and most mysterious recesses, yet at cludes the possibility of thinking or the same time the one who reveals and speaking of him who is the substance expresses God to them, through whom as well as the expression of the revela- the life of God is made theirs, and tion which bears his name in the past enabled to overcome, within and withtense, as the founder of a new faith out them, all that is antagonistic to its merely. He is infinitely more than fuller presence. Such an effect as this this. He is God's answer to the "age- could not be produced by an individual long prayer" of conscious ignorance who is only "regarded as the organ of and weakness for light and power, of a universal principle," or by "a unihuman personality for the divine per- versal principle which has incarnated son. And, therefore, it is that no rec-itself" only "for perception and imagognition of him as the mere "typical ination in an individual life.” Man is expression" of the union between the divine and the human, can either account for the facts or represent the theory of Christianity. For this we must turu, not to a typical expression, but to a concrete fact- "God manifested in the flesh," —and to the effect produced by that fact as exemplified in "the living consciousness of union with Christ, and through him with God, not only as his Father, but the Father of all men," 2 which has existed and borne fruit throughout all Christian ages, not in the first only as the result of an evanescent fervor, in the hearts and lives of men. And if it be regarded as touching on

1 Evolution of Religion, vol. ii., p. 232. 2 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 237.

too real a being to be nourished and developed on illusions, however striking and beautiful, and what he needs, what in all religions he is feeling after, is consciousness of union with God, not with the abstract divine, but with the Divine Personality, the Divine Self. This is a necessity, not only of the race at large, but of each one of those human selfs which make up the race; and this is the "universal cry" to which the Christ-revelation responds, and responds with ever - increasing clearness, fulness, and power as the cry grows more definite, intelligent, and earnest.

And here we touch on what may well

3 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 230.

prove to be the direction of modern which, through him, has emerged from religious development, the outcome of the long course of "material" develall the strife, contention and loud-opment into the self-conscious spiritual voiced Agnosticism of the present day life of man, becomes rooted and un— viz., a more general and at the same conquerable certainty. The whole gist time a more individual "consciousness of the matter lies in the words " "if of union with Christ and through him such be indeed the case," and just bewith God" than has ever yet been cause man is a personal being it is the attained in any age save by excep- personal proof he needs, the proof tional Christians. Nothing less will which can be given to each one, and to set at rest the uneasy scepticism and each one alone, out of all the multithe unsatisfied longings of the present tudes of his kind, which penetrates day; nor will the conflict cease till it through his isolation and, by showing has issued, as in times so pervaded him that he is known, enables him also by the scientific spirit it cannot but to know, thus bringing him out of the issue, in the appeal to experiment, in darkness of his individual solitude into the ascertaining of each man for him- the very light of God, the light of conself not what Christ was, but what he scious sonship to the Divine Father and is. With a living person we can enter conscious brotherhood with his fellowinto direct communication, and the men. Few persons have either time proof of his existence can never be pri- or inclination to wade through masses marily historical; neither is the ingress of polemic, to study and classify the to man's consciousness confined to the results of "the higher criticism; " but channels of the senses alone. To see, every man, if he have even the faintest to hear, to touch is not everything, suspicion that Christ is more than the nay, it is very little, in the inter- mere "founder of Christianity," that course between personal beings, as the he is the living bond of union between sad and too frequent occurrence of God and men through whom alone the close external relationship and wide knowledge of God is possible, can put internal separation abundantly testi- his suspicion to the test, and can be fies. Remembering that his claim of encouraged in so doing by giving as whom we speak is not only to be him- much credence to those who in this self a person but to be the source and supreme matter declare "We know in reason of all personal existence, the whom we have believed," as he would conviction that if such be indeed the to equally reliable witnesses in other case there can be no barrier between lower branches of knowledge. him and any individual of the race

EMMA MARIE CAILLARD.

COLDEST DAYS IN LONDON. The fol- the highest temperature during the day, lowing letter of Mr. C. J. Symons to the there has been only one day nearly so severe Times is worthy of being recorded. He says of January 5, 1894 : “The lowest temperature this morning, 13·1°; temperature at 9 A.M., 14.3°; highest temperature up to 6 P.M., 18.4°. As regards the first two items, they have been exceeded on three occasions since 1858, notably by the minima of 6.7° on December 25, 1860, and on January 4, 1867, and slightly by the minimum of 11.8° on January 17, 1881, the day preceding the memorable blizzard. As regards

as to-day. The only days on which the temperature has not risen to 24° or upwards have been to-day, with 18:4°, and January 4, 1867, when it only reached 16-9°. The night was, therefore, with three exceptions, the coldest for thirty-five years, and the day has, I believe, been the coldest but one in the same period, and the coldest for twenty-seven years." Mr. Symons's meteorological observatory is at 62 Camden Square, N. W. London.

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And the sea sobbed, with ever desolate All Love! for, with one jealous, joyful beat.