This slender book is an attempt to approach these two subjects--atonement and prayer--in this spirit and by this method. We can never get the telescope or microscope turned upon the objects of spiritual experience and we cannot use the mathematical method which has worked such wonders in the physical realm. There will always be some who cannot _see_ the evidence. But it is worth while to show that these two pillars of religion do rest--not on air--but on experience which can be verified and tested; that they rest in fact on the elemental basis of life, upon which we live our common social life together. I trust it will help some to find the trail, and that it will convince some perplexed, though honest, readers that however their own quest has fared there is another search beside their own,--the quest of a Divine Companion who spares no pain or cost to bring us all into a fellowship with Him. _Haverford, Pennsylvania, New Year_ 1906. The Historical and the Inward Christ “All who since Jesus have come into union with God have come into union with God _through Him_. And thus it is confirmed in every way that, even to the end of time, all wise and intelligent men must bow themselves reverently before this Jesus of Nazareth; and that the more wise, intelligent and noble they themselves are, the more humbly will they recognize the exceeding nobleness of this great and glorious manifestation of the Divine Life.” _Fichte’s “Way Toward the Blessed Life,” p. 391._ “Christ is the Eternal Humanity in the life of the Infinite.” _George A. Gordon’s “The Christ of Today,” p. 136._ “The word of God is continually born anew in the hearts of holy men.” _Epistle to Diognetus, A. D. 125._ THE HISTORICAL AND THE INWARD CHRIST. There was once a widespread fear that exact methods of historical research would deprive us of that luminous divine Figure toward whom the world had reverently turned its face for more than eighteen centuries. Some suspected that our records of His life were crowded with myth and legend, others believed that the singular story which had so profoundly touched the world’s heart was the creation of highly wrought enthusiastic disciples. To-day, after more than half a century of critical sifting and acute probing, this luminous Life is more firmly established as the central fact of history than ever before. “That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows Or decomposes but to recompose Becomes my universe which loves and knows.” It is not my purpose at present to retell the story, or to point out how much criticism has left unshaken. I want rather to show how the historical Christ, as a revelation of God, fits into a cosmic system of evolution and how He is related to the Spirit that witnesses with our spirits and is the inward life of the Saints of all ages and lands.