spiritual energies as were needful for the tasks that were present when
Christianity started to conquer the world. Its aspects of "world-denial
and world-renewal" render Christianity the very religion we need. "It is
the religion of religions," but a statement of this fact does not mean
the realisation of the fact. The same energy and aspiration are needful
to-day as in the days of yore. Christianity, whenever it has lived on
its highest levels, has struggled for two tremendous facts at least: the
insufficiency of the world and the regeneration of the world in the
light of the Divine. It is not a repetition of what the Founder said
concerning religion. What the Founder said cost him enormous labour to
discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same
spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In
order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar
to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist,
Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have
disappeared, and men can delude themselves into believing that they
possess it when in fact they are the possessors of but little of its
spirit and of much of its form. But the possession of the same spirit as
that of Jesus constitutes the further development of Christianity, and
this further development is nothing other than what we have already
seen--the experience and efficacy of an eternal order of things in the
midst of all the changes of time. Thus we are thrown back once more, not
upon our bare individual selves, but upon the presence of the Divine
within the spiritual life itself. Christianity is therefore not
something that has been completed in the past, but the highest mode of
conceiving and of experiencing Life in the present; it becomes an
inward, personal and spiritual experience; and its duration and
expansion depend upon the increase and depth of such a spiritual
inwardness.