Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/188

162 even as, at times of special enlightenment, Jacob was called Israel; and Saul, Paul.

The third event of this eventful period, — a period of such wonderful spiritual import to mankind! — was the advent of a higher Christianity.

From this dazzling, God-crowned summit, the Nazarene stepped suddenly before the people and their schools of philosophy; Gnostic, Epicurean, and Stoic. He must stem these rising angry elements, and walk serenely over their fretted, foaming billows.

Here the cross became the emblem of Jesus' history; while the central point of his Messianic mission was peace, good will, love, teaching, and healing.

Clad with divine might, he was ready to stem the tide of Judaism, and prove his power, derived from Spirit, to be supreme; lay himself as a lamb upon the altar of materialism, and therefrom rise to his nativity in Spirit.

The corporeal Jesus bore our infirmities, and through his stripes we are healed. He was the Way-shower, and suffered in the flesh, showing mortals how to escape from the sins of the flesh.

There was no incorporeal Jesus of Nazareth. The spiritual man, or Christ, was after the similitude of the Father, without corporeality or finite mind.

Materiality, worldliness, human pride, or self-will, by demoralizing his motives and Christlikeness, would have dethroned his power as the Christ.

To carry out his holy purpose, he must be oblivious of human self.

Of the lineage of David, like him he went forth, simple as the shepherd boy, to disarm the Goliath. Panoplied in the strength of an exalted hope, faith, and