Or, to speak of something grander, though perhaps less poetical, the great pantheistic religions gave ready room for the fancy that there was a spark of deity in every sentient being, and that it might be more and more developed into God. In them, indeed, God is but the general principle of life and intelligence which runs throughout all the universe; it is duller in one spot and brighter in another; here it may almost go out in darkness, and there it may burst forth into the light of heaven and of glory. But it is not a person; at the highest it is an impersonal power. It may dwell therefore in the Bull Apis, it may reside in the Lama of Thibet, it may grow to be the highest intelligence in Buddha. In none of them is it really God. It is but the embodiment and the kindling up of a spark of Divine Being, but not a living, thinking, willing maker of the universe and ruler of all things. But Jesus Christ, when He was upon earth, lived among the only people on the earth who had a clear conception of one great and personal God, so one and so personal as each separate man is one and personal, man having been made in the express likeness of God. Jesus Christ lived among a people who esteemed that one personal God so great and so awful that they dared not even speak His name, the name by which He had specially revealed Himself, for they thought that that name, if human lips should utter it, would shake heaven and earth. Yet it was this great, only, incommunicable, unutterable Being, whose Son He called Himself, whose very essence He claimed for His own. Let it not be said, that He came at a moment when Jewish hopes were all centred on some heavenly Messenger to redeem and restore them, that He only fell into their notions, took advantage of their expectations and flattered their prejudices. They expected a Messiah, no doubt, with much in him that was heavenly (if you will, Divine); they expected Him to redeem their nation, to overthrow their enemies, to advance their kingdom. But they never thought that their Messiah would claim to be the Supreme JEHOVAH, they never thought that He was to redeem, not their bodies, but their souls, by dying as a lamb sacrificed upon the altar; they never thought that, instead of satisfying their patriotism and elevating their nation, He would teach them to subordinate patriotism to universal love of man, and that instead of extending the earthly kingdom of Israel through the world, He would found a kingdom which should be wholly moral and spiritual, and which would place the Greek, the Roman and the Samaritan on the same footing with the long-favoured children of Abraham. So far were they from any thoughts like these, that it was because of all this that they crucified their Christ.