The historical character of Christian life and thought is surely evidence that Jesus Christ has accomplished something real; and when we get a better hold of that, the problem of his person should be more within our reach. The splendid phrase of Paul--"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1)--or that of 1 Peter: "In whom ye rejoice ... with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet. 1:8)--gives us the keynote. The gaiety of the Early Church in its union with Jesus Christ rings through the New Testament and the Christian fathers from Hermas to Augustine. The Church has come singing down the ages.[36] The victory over sin--no easy thing at any time--is another permanent feature of Christian experience. The psychological value of what Dr. Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a new affection" is not enough studied by us. Look at the freedom, the growth, the power of the Christian life--where do they all come from? We cannot leave God out of this. At any rate, there they are in the Christian experience; and where does anything that matters flow from but from God? There is again the evidence of Christian achievement; and it should be remarked that the Christian always tells us that he himself has not the power, that it comes from God, that he asks for it and God gives it. As for the easy explanation of all religious life by "auto-suggestion," we may note that it involves a loose and unscientific use of a more or less scientific theory--never a very safe way to knowledge. In any case, it has been pointed out, the word adds nothing to the number of our facts; nor is it quite clear yet that it eliminates God from the story any more than the term "digestion" makes it inappropriate to say Grace before meat. All these things--peace, joy, victory, and the rest--follow from the taking away of sin, and imply that it no longer stands between God and man. All this is the work of the historical Jesus. It is he who has changed the attitude of man to God, and by changing it has made it possible for God to do what he has done. If God, in Paul's phrase, "hath shined in our hearts" (2 Cor. 4:6), it was Jesus who induced men to take down the shutters and to open the windows. It is all associated, historically, with the ever-living Jesus Christ, and with God in him. This brings us to the central question, the relation of Jesus with God--the problem of Incarnation. After all that has been said, we shall not approach it "a priori". We are too apt to put the Incarnation more or less in algebraic form: x+y=a,