creedal characterization of Christ thus far undertaken. Of recent years an attempt has been made to prove that no such person as Jesus ever existed. The attempt has proved futile, but it has had a significance altogether different from what the propounders of the theory intended. The original aim was to show the contradictions of the testimony concerning Jesus and the inadequacies of the testimony to his existence as an historical Person. The result has been to show that the real significance of the Christ life is not to be found in any particular utterance, or in any specific deed, but in the total impact that he made upon the consciousness of man as suggesting the immediate presence of the Divine. The quality of the Christ life satisfies us in the inner depths as bearing witness to the quality of the God life. We have no sympathy with the views of the critics just mentioned; but we must say that no matter how the thought of God in Christ got abroad, no matter how mistaken our thought of the historical facts at the beginning of the Christian era, the belief in the Christlike God nevertheless did get abroad. There is no effacing that conception from the New Testament. No matter what detailed changes in the narrative itself radical criticism may think itself capable of making, the door was opened wide enough in the Christ for the divine light to stream through. We said in the last chapter that the most important feature of the biblical revelation is God himself. We must now say that the supreme fact about God is Christ. CHAPTER VI THE BOOK OF THE CROSS If the central feature of the Scriptures is their idea of God, and if the climax of the biblical revelation is Christ, the greatest fact about Christ from the point of view of the Bible is his cross. We say _fact_ advisedly, for we are not dealing with the theories that have sprung up to interpret the meaning of the cross. We are trying to deal solely with the direct impressions which seem to have been made upon the scriptural writers as to the place of the cross in the revealing movement.