486 THE UNCHANGING CHRIST
unmanned. The deep reality of life abides the same: Jesua Christ the same to-day as yesterday.^
3. Thus, amid all the changing views and varying thporiea about Christ, our Lord, the living Person still remains the same. As the supreme Revelation of God, as the supreme Revelation of man, and as the Saviour, He stands unaltered through the vicissi- tudes of the ages. And it is just this permanence of the living, unchanging Christ that is the pledge and guarantee of the life of Christianity. Other religious have faded and passed away. Once, so the legend goes, along the winding shore of the blue ./Egean Sea the mournful cry was heard, " Great Pan is dead," And the deities of classic Greece departed from their thrones, and the oracles left the temples, and the sprites of mountain and woodland were seen no more for ever. A religion died. And later again, far away in the desolate North, there sounded another yet more bitter cry, " Baldur is dead — Baldur the Good, the Beautiful." And amid the terrific conflict of the twilight of the gods the old Scandinavian deities perished in their turn, and another religion died. Yes, many religions have died. But Christianity does not die and cannot die. For the life of Christianity is the Living One — the abiding, the unchanging, the imperishable One — "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever."
^ The Evangelic Jesus cannot be a mere ideal ; for an ideal cannot enkindle love. He is a historic person, and He lived among men as the Evangelists have portrayed Him. But He is more tlian that. It is impossible to love one who is remote from us, and has never been in present and personal contact with us ; and therefore Jesus is more than a historic person who dwelt in Palestine long ago. He is the Living Lord, the Eternal Saviour, who was manifested, according to the Scriptures, in the days of His flesh, and still, according to His promise, visits the souls that put their trust in Him and makes His abode with them. Here lies the supreme and incontrovertible evidence of the historicity of the Gospels. The final decision rests not with the critics but with the saints ; and their verdict is unanimous and unfaltering. They know the Divine Original, and they attest the faithfulness of the portrait.^
* A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch, 282. ■ D. Smith, T]ie Historic Jesus, 117.
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^ The mysterious union of human souls with the Living Christ, which constitutes the strength of the Christian Church, has been proved by signs and wonders. It has been proved by the days in which the Church lost her sense of Divine fellowship and became cold and unbelieving; then the Church sank into an irreligious and worldly institution, helpless, hopeless, and corrupt. It has been proved by the days of revival, when the Church returned unto her first love and faith ; then she arose in her might and conquered new provinces of the world, radiant, strong, triumphant. If the Church as a body, and her members as single disciples, declare that their weakness has arisen from the absence of Christ, driven away by unbelief, and their strength has alone come from Christ when He returned in the power of His Spirit, what can be said against such witness ? and why should it not be accepted as true ? There is such a thing as the mirage of the desert, which has mocked the dying traveller; and the history of religion affords fantastic notions which have been the craze of society for a day and have vanished away, Xo one with a serious face can make any comparison between these passing delusions and the faith of Christ. There is also the oasis where the grass is green and the palm trees stand erect in their beauty, and the reason thereof is the unfailing spring which rises from the heart of the earth and yields its living water to the traveller as he journeys across the desert from the land which he has left to the land which he has never seen. That spring is the Spirit of the living Christ, who "was dead," and is "alive for evermore"; who re- maineth from age to age the strength and hope of the race into which He was born and for which He died.^
III.
The Unchanging Christ is a Christ of Infinite Variety.
When we look upon Christ in Himself, as the Person, the living Eeality that has been operating through the ages, nothino indeed appears more permanent and certain. But again when we look upon Christ as reflected in the thoughts of men — when we consider men's notious about Him, their feelings about Him, their ideas about His Person — the sameness breaks up into something infinitely variable. The Christ who here confronts us is a changing Christ. He is never quite alike for any two intelli-
* J. Watson, The Life of the Master, 407.
488 THE UNCHANGING CHRIST
gences. He varies from man to man, and from age to age. What a difference there is, for example, between the Christ of John Chrysostom and the Christ of John Calvin ! What a difference between the Christ of mediaeval Scholasticism and the Christ of twentieth-century Modernism ! What a difference between the Christ of the Eussian peasant, and of the German theologian, and of the average business man of London or New York ! The note that most forcibly strikes us, at any rate at first, is this note of difference. The outline of that gracious Figure seems continually to waver. It is never the same — no, never quite the same. We see in Jesus something other than our fathers saw ; and those who come after us will probably find much in Him that we, sharp-sighted though we think ourselves, have not discovered. And yet, behind all superficial differences and divergences, the Lord who claims us is indeed the same. The clouds take many shapes about the summit of the mountain, are here to-day and gone to-morrow, but the mountain for ever stands. And so, behind the glimmering mists of human fancy, behind our uncer- tain wisdom and our fluctuating formulas, behind our notions of Christ and our notions of other people's notions of Christ, the great Eeality eternally abides. The living Person does not change. That Jesus whose life has been the inspiration, whose truth the illumination, whose death the salvation of uncounted millions ; that Jesus whose marvellous attractiveness has cast its sweet spell alike upon an ancient and upon a modern world ; that Jesus whom Peter preached and Francis followed, whom mystics saw in visions and whom saints have loved — He alters not. He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the Ending, " the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever."