Yet the man in the street has something in common with tlie greatest and the highest. If he cannot initiate he may imitate, and if he cannot make the discovery he may appreciate and act on it when it has been made. For in the long-run the achievements of great men in any sphere, just in proportion to their truth and value, turn out to have elements of permanent value. Though the discoveries of a person, they have no mere personal value. They are objective, and because objective they may become the possession of every man. We have spoken up to this point of the work of great personalities only so far as that work was a help towards the discovery of truth and a help to life. Belief in them, trust in them, is thus far justified. But no great personality answers to the ideal of greatness in all tlie aspects of greatness. Great men have had their limitations, and great- ness from one point of view has been accompanied with littleness in other respects. The leaders of men have liad their limitations. Some have been great in action, some in thought, some in inven- tion, some in power of poetic or prophetic vision, and some in other ways. Others have been great in gathering into a system the results of the work of former generations, and have tlius marked out the stage to which humanity has come. But the limitations of great men have had their efl'ect, and their achievements may come to hinder and not to help progress. In all spheres of human thought
and action tliis has been true, and the imitative mind of man has striven to live in formula; which have become outworn and efiete. There has been also imitation of great men in those aspects of their activity in which they were not good or great. Illustrations of these facts abound, and need not be dwelt on at length.
But trust in personality as one of the greatest forces of human progress and one of the strongest elements in belief is justified notwithstanding. It alone can give the enthusiasm which confronts difficulties, the personal devotion and love which make men willing to live and die for a great cause. The great epochs of human life, the times whicli stand out in history as full of heroic endeavour, of far-reaching aspiration, and of substantial gain for other ages, have been pre-eminently periods of abounding trust in great ideals ; and these ideals appear in all their grandeur as embodied in some great personality. The imitative mind found its ideal embodied in the great man of its time ; and was touched as with a flame, and followed on and became greater than it knew. The "reat personality became for the lesser men the embodi- ment of the highest ideal they had ever known ; and they, so far as they saw it, embodied it in their own action and character, and wrought it so far into the very constitution of humanity. So the vision grew ; and as one jjersonality after another revealed to men the possible synthesis of the ideal greatness of a perfect personality, men were educated to perceive what they ought to demand in the ideal of a perfect personality in whom they might completely and absolutely trust.
In the perfect personality in whom man may absolutely trust all kinds of ideals must meet, and be harmonized in a perfect unity. Tliat is the postulate of the nature of man. And eacli part of man's complex nature makes its own demand and contributes its own share towards the realization of the ideal. Our intelligent nature demands unity and intelligibility in the Universe, and in Him in whom the Universe lives and moves and has its being. Our moral nature demands its ideal of perfect goodness, righteousness, and holi- ness in order to meet the needs of our moral nature, and to give us scope for the exercise of reverence towards that which is above us, love towards all that helps and sustains us, and bene- volence towards all that needs our help. Tlie esthetic nature furnishes its ideal of perfect beauty and harmony, and demands that reality shall meet this as it meets every other demanci. The heart demands goodness and love, and furnishes in its own action the type of what it demands. The Christian belief is that all these ideals meet and are realized in God. It is the business of Theism to show how these ideals are realized in God, and it is the business of the metaphysician, the ethicist, the ajstheticist, and the poet to show how the various ideals converge to the one great ideal whom we reverently call God. Our intel- lectual, ethical, spiritual, artistic, and emotional ideals agree, must agree, if we are to attain to harmony of life and fulness of being. We repeat again that these are our needs, and our needs have their roots in reality, and reality does not dis- appoint us.
Is there a Personality who can be to all men what some personalities have been to some men and to some nations? Is there one who can be to all nations what the national heroes Iiave been to particular peoples, one who can embody tlieir highest ideals, and who can so react on thum as to make them work out these ideals in themselves ? That is tlie claim which history makes for Christ, which Christians make for Him, and which they believe has been verified in human experience by