But, you may tell me, the young people are taught to be Christians.  It may be want of penetration, but I have not yet been able to perceive it.  As an honest man, whatever we teach, and be it good or evil, it is not the doctrine of Christ.  What he taught (and in this he is like all other teachers worthy of the name) was not a code of rules, but a ruling spirit; not truths, but a spirit of truth; not views, but a view.  What he showed us was an attitude of mind.  Towards the many considerations on which conduct is built, each man stands in a certain relation.  He takes life on a certain principle.  He has a compass in his spirit which points in a certain direction.  It is the attitude, the relation, the point of the compass, that is the whole body and gist of what he has to teach us; in this, the details are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied.  And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and, in the technical phrase, create his character.  A historian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from point to point, from end to end.  This is a degree of trouble which will be gladly taken by a very humble artist; but not even the terror of eternal fire can teach a business man to bend his imagination to such athletic efforts.  Yet without this, all is vain; until we understand the whole, we shall understand none of the parts; and otherwise we have no more than broken images and scattered words; the meaning remains buried; and the language in which our prophet speaks to us is a dead language in our ears.

Take a few of Christ’s sayings and compare them with our current doctrines.

‘Ye cannot,’ he says, ‘serve God and Mammon.’  Cannot?  And our whole system is to teach us how we can!

’The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.’  Are they?  I had been led to understand the reverse:  that the Christian merchant, for example, prospered exceedingly in his affairs; that honesty was the best policy; that an author of repute had written a conclusive treatise ’How to make the best of both worlds.’  Of both worlds indeed!  Which am I to believe then—­Christ or the author of repute?