As to his documents—they too both carry and call forth their witness. We have those Gospels from different men; they speak in different voices and each with its own predilection, even prejudice, and its own colouring of thought, of knowledge or ignorance, of desire. Yet which among these writers could invent his subject? Which has succeeded in seriously defacing it? Behind them all he stands, the prophet of Nazareth, Jesus—God and man, the Christian says—and draws men to himself. No doubt the Christian has much more to tell us than we can ask him for just now, or admit to our discussion. He has a great deal to say in defence of his institutions and his theologians, which may well be said and listened to. But it remains true that for us who are now asking, not for justification of these though ample justification there may be, but for the deepest principles of the Christian religion, it is to the mind of Christ and to him who has that mind that we must turn. Jesus built up no institution, gave no laws, announced no established plans, erected no infallible authority. He gave principles, living and spiritual principles. 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' So his great mystical interpreter hears him say. And men have indeed found response to his words in the opening out of their own life and spirit. We seek the truth and reality of spirit and life, we who are seeking here. And in this search we find ourselves more and more at one with the Christian. The view that he and his fellows take of the Christian Church, that organization which is at least meant to foreshadow the kingdom Jesus preached, lies beyond the scope of this enquiry. All that needs to be said here is that we must not and do not foreclose an enquiry that shall include it. We stand now upon the very threshold of the kingdom; and, may be, we look with longing eyes. ------- CHAPTER IX There is nothing said of man throughout all scripture but what supposes him to stand, in nature, under a necessity of choosing something that is natural, either life or death, fire or water. _William Law._