_i.e._, the Christ-idea, as it is expressed in human nature itself. One who has grasped this, is able for the first time rightly to understand the Bible, for he finds expressed there in a marvellous way what he has previously observed in himself, and he says: It is not necessary to have been brought up with any special reverence for the Gospel; they need only be presented to me, a fully-conscious human being, to stand revealed in all their greatness, by means of what I have learnt through occult science. It is indeed not too much to say that a time will come when it will be recognized by people who have learned through occult science rightly to appreciate the contents of the Gospels, that these are guides of the human race in a sense which is more just to those writings than people have hitherto been to them. It is only through knowledge of human nature itself that humanity will learn to see what is latent in those profound records. It will then be said: If there is to be found in the Gospels that which forms an integral part of human nature, it must have come from the people who wrote these documents on earth. Therefore what genuine reflection brings home to us about our own lives,--the more so the older we grow--must hold especially good with regard to those writers. We ourselves have done many things which we only understand years afterwards, and in the writers of the Gospels may be seen people who wrote out of the higher self which works in man during childhood, so that the Gospels are writings emanating from the wisdom which moulds human nature. Man through his body is a manifestation of spirit, and the Gospels are such a manifestation in writing. On this assumption the idea of inspiration regains its true and loftier meaning. Just as higher forces are at work on the brain during the first three years of childhood, so there were higher forces from spiritual worlds impressed on the souls of the Evangelists, under the influence of which they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of humanity is expressed in such a fact as this. For the human race must surely be _guided_, if within it there are people working who write records under the influence of the same powers that are at work on the moulding of man in profound wisdom. And just as the individual says or does things which he only understands at a later period of life, so collective humanity has produced in the Evangelists means of revelation which can only be understood by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the greater will be the understanding of these records. The individual can feel spiritual guidance within himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those of its members who work as did the writers of the Gospels.