Article April 23, 1910 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES.

with contributions from Canon Alexander, Lyman Abbott

[Universalist Leader.]

There is a spiritual biography of Jesus which is his real biography,—the story of the thoughts, ideas, ideals, convictions which slowly ripened in his consciousness, and finally blossomed forth into his beautiful character. Can we trace this spiritual biography? Can we follow the rays of this inner light back into the soul of our Master? Can we uncover the organic spiritual unity of his spirit? This is the primary psychological and spiritual problem of the Gospels and of the gospel. We are confident that it can be done. Until it is done no real life of Jesus can ever be written. And until it is done we are not ready to construct the real and permanent and universal Christian faith. For the faith which is to rest on the solid and unchanging rock of spiritual truth must uncover the eternal and unchanging realities of the spiritual nature of man. It must go inside of and beyond the multitude of external things over which the world differes. The ultimate, absolute, indestructible things of the Spirit we believe to be there in the soul of our Master, beyond the reach of criticism or fluctuations of human opinion.

[Canon Alexander in Churchman.]

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