Most of us believe that a perfect Man appeared in this world nineteen hundred years ago; and the best that we know about God we have learned from him.  More has been done by his life and teachings to purify religion of its crudities and superstitions than by all other agencies.  The worst of the crudities and superstitions that still linger in our own religion are due to the fact that the people who bear his name only in part accept his teachings and very imperfectly follow his example.  If we could all believe what he has told us and do what he has bidden us, our religion would soon be cleansed from its worst defilements.

The manifestation of the life of God in Jesus Christ we call The Incarnation; and it was a manifestation so much more perfect than any other that the world has seen, that we do well to put the definite article before the word.  Yet it is a mistake to overlook the fact that God dwells in every good man, and manifests himself through him.  And whenever, in any character, the great qualities of truth and justice and purity and courage and honor and kindness are exhibited, we see some reflection of the character of God.

In many a home the father and the mother, by their faithfulness and kindness and self-sacrifice, make it easy for the children to believe in a good God; and in every community brave and true and saintly men and women are revealing to us high qualities which we cannot help interpreting as divine.  We cannot imagine that God is less just or fair or kind than these men and women are; they lift up our ideals of goodness, and they compel us to think better thoughts of him in whom all our ideals are united.

Thus it is that our humanity, as glorified by the Word made flesh, and as lifted up and sanctified by the lives of good men and women, has been a great teacher of pure religion.  We have learned what to think about God and how to worship him aright by what he has shown us in the living epistles of his goodness and grace which he has sent into the world, and, above all, in that “strong Son of God” whom we call our Master.

The other source from which the influences have come by which religion has been purified, is that divine Spirit who is always in the world, and always waiting upon the threshold of every man’s thought, and in the sub-conscious depths of every man’s feeling, to enlighten our understanding and purify our desires.  To every man he gives all that he can receive of light and power.  To many his gifts are but meagre, because their capacities are small and their receptivity is limited; but there are always in the world open minds and docile tempers, to whom he imparts his larger gifts.  Thus we have the order of prophets and inspired men, whose words are full of light and leading.  In the Bible we have a record of the messages given by such men to the world.  In that teaching, rightly interpreted, there is great power to correct the errors and cleanse away the delusions and superstitions which are apt to gather about our religion.  We cannot estimate too highly the work that has been done by these sacred writings in purifying our conception of God.