Lnstly, He never uttered a word to indicate directly and explicitly that He entertained any hope of the regeneration of the civil, or political, or economical conditions and organizations of human society. Why was tliis? Why did He keep Himself so entirely and persistently aloof from these and all other great interests of a kindred nature pertaining to the external relation- sliips and well-being of human life, declining to interfere witli them even when requested to do so? (Lk 12"- 1\ Mt 22"-22). He assumed and main- tained tliis attitude because of the perfect under- standing He had of the necessary conditions and
requirements of human progress in every one of its departments. He had to consider what it was possible and what it was impossible for Him to accomplish during the short period of His lifetime on earth. In doing this He had to keep in view the existing state of society in all the various developments of its life at the time. And He must have known, as any one knowing and correctly interpreting the facts can see was actually the case, that if He had attempted to initiate or to achieve a reformation within any of the domains of human life in question, the result would inevitably have proved worse than useless for Himself and His cause, and for humanity. Knowing this, more- over. He, in the exercise of marvellous faith and patience, left, meanwhile, the renewal of man's social life in all its diversified forms of manifesta- tion, in the hands, and to the times and ways, of God as the moral Governor of the world. For the time being He devoted Himself wholly and exclusively to the moral task which His Father had given Him to do ; and in doing this, and doing it succes-sfully, He rendered to the cause of human progress a service which will never cease increasing the glory of His name.
3. All that has been said makes it easy to show now how Christ Himself, His teaching, and, indeed, the whole of His work on earth and in heaven, can be explained in terms of progress. This explanation was adopted in effect and often used by Himself. So true is this that a great deal of His teaching— the most of it, indeed, when pro- perly understood — can be construed into a theory of what is meant by the progress of humanity, — a theory never stated by Himself in abstract terms, but embodied in the general order of ideas that found such diversified forms of expression in His teaching. Briefly, the theory in question was this — (I) His teaching was all related to the cardinal facts of the moral nature of God and the moral nature of man. (2) A great deal of His teaching w^as concerned with the moral relations between God and men and between man and man. (3) In His teaching He dwelt much upon the inward and direct moral relations of men to God, which in every instance are relations of men to Him as individualti. For it is only in the individual that the moral conditions exist which make inward and direct relations of God to men possible. And this must have been one of Christ's reasons for the immense importance and value that He attached to men as individuals. (4) He also dwelt much on the subject of tlie rectifying and the perfecting of the moral relations of men to God and to one another. (5) He announced, and often alluded to and explained in various ways and connexions, the fact that it was His predestined task as man's Saviour to occupy the position and to exercise the function of Mediator within the sphere of the moral relations of God to men, and of men to Him and to one another. Though He never used the woi'd ' Mediator ' in this connexion, He often spoke of His relation to God and men in expressions meaning the same thing. And He taught also that His work of mediation would be continued after His work on earth had been finished (e.g. Mt W" 28'8--», Jn 14-17). (6) It was within the domain of the order of these great facts and ideas, which are all of an essentially moral nature, that Christ conceived *The fundamental need of human progress as lying. Here also He saw the essential nature of the progress needed, and found the grounds on which to His mind man's progress was guaranteed. (7) But it was not Christ's idea that the progressive realization of these moral facts and ideas would come to mani- festation only within the invisible moral sphere of the individual and social life of mankind. He
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cherished the certain conviction and hope that they would come gradually, in the course of their realization, to manifestation in the regeneration of all the various external relations of men to one another in the conditions, organizations, and ac- tivities of their social life. (8) He was fully per- suaded that the course of human progress, such as He conceived its nature to be and the conditions on which it would proceed in the individual and social life of humanity, A\ould strictly and per- sistently follow the laws of evolution. It may be added, linally, that it is within the region of these facts that the greatness of the extent of Christ's originality as a teacher is to be seen, and also the monientousness of the position and task He claimed for Himself as Mediator between God and men.