+The divine Man.+--The idea of a divine Man, the emanation of the infinite, the soul of the universe, the source and goal of all humanity, is ages older than Christian theology. It can be traced in Babylonian religious literature, for instance, at a period older even than the Old Testament. It played a not unimportant part in Greek thought, and Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, works it out in some detail in his religio-philosophic system, which aimed to combine the wide outlook of Greek culture with the high seriousness of Hebrew religion. It is a true, indeed an inevitable, conception, if we hold anything like a consistent view of the immanence of God in His universe. With what God have we to do except the God who is eternally man? This aspect of the nature of God has been variously described in the course of its history. It has been called the Word, the Son, and, as we have seen, the second person in the Trinity. For various reasons I prefer to call it--or rather Him--the eternal Christ. I do this because, for one thing, the word "Christ" is a living word with a clearly marked ethical content and a great religious value. Originally, of course, it was but the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, and meant the "anointed one," the person chosen for a special divine work. But in the New Testament, especially the writings of St. Paul, as well as all Christian history through, it is associated on the one hand with the personality of Jesus, and, on the other, with the fontal or ideal Man who contains and is expressed in all human kind. According to the New Testament writers, Jesus was and is the Christ, but in His earthly life His consciousness of the fact was limited. But, as we have come forth from this fontal manhood, we too must be to some extent expressions of this eternal Christ; and it is in virtue of that fact that we stand related to Jesus, and that the personality of Jesus has anything to do with us. Here is where the value of our belief in the interaction of the higher and the lower self comes in. Fundamentally our being is already one with that of the eternal Christ, and faith in Jesus is faith in Him. Jesus is not one being and the Christ another; the two are one, and Jesus seems to have known it during His earthly ministry. He lived His life in such a way as to reveal the very essence of the Christ nature. He is therefore central for us, and we are complete in Him. Here is the goal of all moral effort--Christ. Here, too, is the highest reach of the religious ideal--Christ. "For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."