As organic evolution reached its goal and completion in _man_, so human evolution must reach its goal and completion in the _ideal man_--i. e., the Christ. According to this view, the Christ is the ideal man, and therefore--(mark the necessary implication)--and therefore the Divine man. We are all as men (as contradistinguished from brutes)--we are _all_, I say, _sons of God_; the Christ is the well-beloved Son. We are _all_ in the image of God; he is the express and _perfect image_. We are all partakers in various degrees of the Divine nature; in him the Divine nature is completely realized. It is not necessary that the ideal man--the Christ--should be perfect in knowledge or in power; on the contrary, he must grow in wisdom and in stature, like other men; but he must be _perfect in character_. _Character is essential spirit._ All else, even knowledge, is only environment for its culture. In the dazzling light of modern science we are apt to forget this. Character is the _attitude_ of the human spirit toward the Divine Spirit. If I should add anything to this definition, I would say it is spiritual _attitude_ and spiritual _energy_. In the Christ this attitude must be wholly right; the harmony--the union with the Divine--must be perfect. This perfect union gives, of necessity, also fullness of spiritual energy. Now, I wish to show that, although the Christ as thus defined must be human--yes, even more intensely human than any one of us--yet by the law of evolution we ought to expect him to differ from us in an inconceivable degree, and especially in a superhuman way. This I do by a series of illustrations. We have said that the Christ is the ideal and therefore the Divine man--that he is the goal and completion of humanity. But in evolution a goal is not only a completion of one stage, but also the beginning of another and higher stage--on a higher plane of life with new and higher capacities and powers _unimaginable from any lower plane_. Let me illustrate: 1. As man is the ideal--the goal and completion of animal evolution, and yet is he also a birth into a higher plane of life--the spiritual; so the Christ, the ideal man, may be only the goal and completion of human evolution, and yet is he also a birth into a new and higher plane--_the Divine_. 2. As the human spirit pre-existed in embryo in animals, slowly developing through all geological times, until it came to birth and immortality in man, so the Divine spirit is in embryo in man in various degrees of development, and comes to birth and completion of Divine life in the Christ. 3. As animals reached, finally, _conscious relations_ with God in man, even so man reaches _union_ with God in the Christ. As man, the ideal animal, is a union of the _animal_ with the _spiritual_; so the Christ, the ideal of human evolution, is a union of the _human_ and the _Divine_.