Christianity is essentially, I should say, a unique revelation of God. Here for the first time the race discovers that God identifies himself with humanity, is in the stream of it, is suffering with us, is in moral conflict with sin and evil, is conquering through the travail and tragedy of finite persons, and is eternally, in mind and heart and will, a God of triumphing Love. No texts adequately “prove” this mighty truth. We cannot tie it down to “sayings,” though there are “sayings” which declare it. The life of Jesus, the supreme decisions through which he expresses his purpose, the spirit which dominates him and guides his decisive actions, make the truth plain that God meant _that_ to him and that his way of life revealed that kind of God. Through all the fusions and confusions of history and through all the vagaries of man’s tortuous course since the Church began to be built, Christ as eternal Spirit has gone on revealing this truth about God and demonstrating the victorious power of this way of life. The making of a kingdom of God in the world, the spread of the brother-spirit, the expansion of the love-method, the increase of coöperation, sympathy, and service, the continued incursion of the divine into the life of the human, these are the things now and always which indicate the vitality and progress of Christianity, and the uninterrupted revelation of God. Always, in every period of history, the essential truth of Christianity must be revealed and expressed in and through a medium not altogether adapted to it. It is always living and working in a world more or less alien to it. It has at any stage only partially realized its ideal, and only achieved in a fragmentary way the goal toward which it is moving. It means endless conquest and ever fresh winning of unwon victories. It must be for us all a vision and a venture, it must be a thing of faith and forecast. At the same time it is, in a very real sense, experience and achievement. God _has_ entered into humanity. Love has revealed its redeeming power. Grace is as much a reality as mountains are. The kingdom of God though not all in sight yet is, I believe, as sure as gravitation. The invisible, eternal Christ, living in the soul of man, revealing his will in moral and spiritual victories in personal lives, is, I am convinced, as genuine a fact as electricity is. But we shall see _all_ that Christianity means only when the living totality of the revelation of God through humanity is complete. CHAPTER VII THE NEAR AND THE FAR I THINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME