Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/256

 reality, and a reality of which we can gradually, though very slowly, trace the laws.

The more we trace the real law of Christianity's action the grander it will seem. Certainly in the Gospels there is plenty of matter to call out our feelings. But perhaps this has been somewhat over-used and mis-used, applied, as it has been, chiefly so as to be subservient to what we call the fairy-tale of the three supernatural men,—a story which we do not deny to have, like other products of the popular imagination, its pathos and power, but which we have seen to be no solid foundation to rest our faith in the Bible on. And perhaps, too, we do wrong, and inevitably fall into what is artificial and unnatural, in labouring so much to produce in ourselves now, as the one impulse determining us to use the method and secret and temper of Jesus, that conscious ardent sensation of personal love to him, which we find the first generation of Christians feeling and professing, and which was the natural motor for those who were with him or near him, and, so to speak, touched him; and in making this our first object. At any rate, misemployed as this motor has often been, it might be well to forgo or at least suspend its use for ourselves and others for a time, and to fix our minds exclusively on the recommendation given to the method and secret of Jesus by their being true, and by the whole course of things proving this.

Now, just as the best recommendation of the oracle committed to Israel, Righteousness is salvation, is found in our more and more discovering, in our own history and in the whole history of the world, that it is so, so we shall find it to be with the method and secret of Jesus. That this is the righteousness which is salvation, that the method and secret of Jesus, that is to say, conscience and self-renouncement, are righteousness, bring about the kingdom of God or the reign of righteousness,—this, which is the Christian