The mystery is deepest
here. For here we transfer the antinomy from thought to conduct; from
inner perception to one Being's actual experience. Here, in Him, we
say we see it resolved into its higher synthesis in actual operation.
Here, then, we can almost look into it. Yet when we do gaze, our eyes
dazzle, our minds swerve, it is too much. It is not easy, indeed, at
the present time it seems to be impossible to reconcile the Christ
of history with the Christ of experience. Yet there would be neither
right nor reason in saying that the former was more of a reality
than the latter. And all the time the heart from which great thoughts
arise, "the heart which has its reasons of which the mind knows
nothing," says, Here in Him is the consummate quality, the absolute
note of life. Here the impossible has been accomplished. Here the
opposites meet and the contradictions blend. Here is something so
incredible that it is true.
Of course, Jesus is of us and He is ours. That is true and it is
inexpressibly sweet to remember it. Again, to use our old solecism,
that is the lesser part of the truth; the greater part, for men of
religion, is that Jesus is of God, that He belongs to Him. His chief
office for our world has not been to show us what men can be like; it
has been to give us the vision of the Eternal in a human face. For if
He does reveal God to man then He must hold, as President Tucker says,
the quality and substance of the life which He reveals.
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