In dealing with all these three groups of records, we have to note the seriousness of the men who made the experiments, their energy of mind, their determination to reach real facts and, in Cromwell’s great phrase, to “speak things.”  They will have the truth of the matter.  Intricate and entangled as is the history, for instance, of the Arian controversy—­that controversy which “turned on a diphthong,” as Carlyle said in his younger days—­it represented far more than mere logomachy, as Carlyle saw later on.  It followed from a determination to get at the real fact of who and what Jesus Christ is; and the two words, that differed by a diphthong, embodied diametrically opposite conceptions of him.  With all the super-subtlety that sometimes characterizes theologians, these men had a passion for truth.  It led them into paths where our minds find a difficulty in following; but the motive was the imperative sense that thinking men must examine and understand their supreme experience—­a motive that must weigh with men who are in earnest about life.  The great hymns of the Church—­such as the “Dies Irae” of Thomas of Celano, or Bernard’s “Jesu dulcis memoria”, or Toplady’s “Rock of Ages”—­are transcripts from life, made by deep-going and serious minds.  The writers are recording, with deep conviction of its worth, what they have discovered in experience.  A man who takes Christ seriously and will “examine life,” will often find in those great hymns, it may be with some surprise, an anticipation of his own experience as Bunyan did in Luther’s Commentary on Galatians.  Livingstone had “Jesu dulcis memoria”—­the Latin of it—­ringing in his head as he travelled in unexplored Africa.  Men who did such work—­work that lasts and is recognized again and again to be genuine by others busy in the same field—­cannot have been random, light-hearted creatures.  They were, in fact, men tested in life, men of experience of wide and deep experience—­men with a gift for living, developed in heart as well as in brain.  The finest of Greek critics, Longinus, said that, “The great style ("hupsos”) is an echo of a great soul.”  Neander said—­and it is again and again true—­that “it is the heart that makes the theologian.”  Where we find a great hymn or a great theology, we may be sure of finding a great nature and a great experience behind it.

Let us sum up our general results so far.  First of all, whatever be the worth of the consensus of Christian opinion—­and we have to decide how much it is worth, bearing in mind the type of man who has worked and suffered to make it in every age; and, I think, it runs high, as the work of serious and explorative minds—­the consensus of Christian opinion gives the very highest name to Jesus Christ.  Men, who did not begin with any preconception in his favour, and who have often had a great deal of difficulty in explaining to others—­and perhaps to themselves—­the course by which they have reached their conclusions, claim the utmost