for Jesus—­and this in spite of the most desperate philosophical difficulties about monotheism.  With a strong sense of fact, with a deepening feeling for reality, with a growing value for experience, and with bolder ventures upon experience, men have found that their conception of Jesus deepens and grows; he means more to them the more they are.  And, as was noted in the first chapter, in a rational universe, where truth counts and error fails, the Church has risen in power with every real emphasis laid on Jesus Christ.  What does this involve?

So far our records.  To-day we are living in an era when great scientific discoveries are made, and more are promised.  Geology once unsettled people about Genesis; but closer study of the Bible and of science has given truer views of both, and thinking people are as little troubled about geology now as about Copernican astronomy.  At present heredity and psychology are dominating our minds—­or, rather, theories as to both; for though beginnings have been made, the stage has not yet been reached of very wide or certain discovery.  There is still a great deal of the soul unexplored and unmapped.  No reasonable person would wish to belittle the study either of evolution or of psychology; but the real men of science would probably urge that lay people should take more pains to know the exact meaning and scope of scientific terms, and to have some more or less clear idea in their minds when they use them.  However, all these modern discoveries and theories are, to many men’s minds, a challenge to the right of Christians to speak of Jesus Christ as they have spoken of him, a challenge to our right to represent the facts of Christian life as we have represented them—­in other words, they are a challenge to us to return to experience and to see what we really mean.  If our study of Jesus in the preceding chapters has been on sound lines, we shall feel that the challenge to face facts is in his vein; it was what he urged upon men throughout.

The old problem returns upon us:  Who and what is this Jesus Christ?  We are involved in the recurrent need to re-examine him and re-explore him.

There are several ways of doing so.  Like every other historical character Jesus is to be known by what he does rather than by “a priori” speculation as to what he might be.  In the study of history, the first thing is to know our original documents.  There are the Gospels, and, like other historical records, they must be studied in earnest on scientific lines without preconception.  And there are later records, which tell us as plainly and as truthfully of what he has done in the world’s history.  We can begin, then, with the serious study of the actual historical Jesus, whom people met in the road and with whom they ate their meals, whom the soldiers nailed to the cross, whom his disciples took to worshipping, and who has, historically, re-created the world.