It has these powers, first, because of its want of system.

Christ gave ideas, but not their forms. We have one connected discourse of his, and there is not a vestige of systematic theology in it. Nay more, many of the statements are so incapable of being grasped by the intellect acting alone, and so ambiguous and paradoxical to the pure reason, that they seem to have been spoken for the despair of systematisers.

What is one to do with a sentence like this- Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'? We cannot make a dogma out of it; we cannot get it into a system; it breaks down under logical analysis. 'What is it to be pure in heart ?' asks some defining person; does it refer to general cleanliness from all sin, or freedom from the special sin of unchaste thought? What is it to see God? Above all, what is God? That question is insoluble, unknowable.'

We cannot call a teaching systematic which in this way leaves aside the understanding unless first instructed by feeling, which appeals first of all to certain spiritual powers in man which it declares to be the most human powers he possesses. Such phrases have no intellectual outlines; purity of heart has nothing to do with the region of the understanding; God is not an intellectual conception. But if man has distinctly spiritual emotions and desires, words like these thrill him like music.

Indeed, there is a fine analogy to Christ's words in music. It is the least definable of all the arts; it appeals to emotion, not to reason. Neither you nor I can

say of that air of Mozart's that it means this or that. It means one thing to me, another thing to you. It leaves, however, an indefinite but similar impression upon us both a sense of exquisite melody which soothes life, a love of a life in harmony with the impression made, and an affection for the man who gave us so delicate an emotion. So is it with the words of Christ. The understanding cannot define them; the spirit receives them, and each man receives them in accordance with the state of his spirit. To one these words, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' are solemn with warning, to another they are soothing with comfort; to one they mean battle, to another peace; to one they sound like music on the waters, to another like the trump of doom.

Could you define the meaning of Mozart's air, so that it should be the same to all, how much had been lost! Could you do the same by Christ's words, what a misfortune! To limit them to one meaning would be to destroy their life.

Again, take the paradoxical sayings. 'If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other.' Submit that to the criticism of the understanding, without permitting spiritual feeling to play upon it, and it becomes absurd. Define it accurately, and there is either too much or too little left of it. Tell the man who has a tendency to fear that he is to take it literally, and he becomes a coward on principle; tell the same to another who has military traditions of honour, and he says that Christ's teaching is not fit for practical life. But do not attempt to define it, let the spirit of each

man explain it to himself, and the truth which is in it will work its way.

There is no doubt, I think, that Christ would have refused to explain it. All He would have said, He did say: 'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.'

It seems as if Christ distinctly chose indefiniteness in certain parts of his teaching, in order to shut out the possibility of any rigid system of Christian thought.

Of course there are positive and definite portions of his teaching. Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.' 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' 'Love one another, even as I have loved you.' These were definite statements, which appealed to the spirit of man, but even in their case Christ never wove them into a fixed system of theology, nor hardened them into an unchanging mode of practice.

How was He to systematise aspiration to perfection, or define the love of man to man, or explain in limited words the passionate desire to be redeemed from the moral degradation of sin? Was He to reply to men who asked Him to say what He meant by our in 'Our Father '?

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No; the statements were positive, but they had to do with things not knowable by the understanding, not definable by the intellect. Therefore, Christ's religion can never be made into a system. It will form the basis and the life of system after system-it will never be itself a system. And, because of this, it has the power of expanding with the religious growth of the world,

and of adapting itself to the religious standpoints of various nations.

do so.

Men must form syste ms, it belongs to ournature to Fifty years did not pass after the death of Christ before Christianity was cast into a mould, and intellectual propositions formed around it. But even then S. Paul cast it into one mould, and S. John into one quite different. It was flexible to both, and retained in both these men its root ideas and its spiritual influence, so that its spirit through S. John had power upon the Oriental and through S. Paul upon the Western world.

A century afterwards the modes of representing Christianity changed, and continued to change from generation to generation in that intellectual time, till there were as many systems of Christianity as there were nations in the Church. Its flexibility was proved to be almost infinite. And it has continued so up to the present time. It is systematised in three or four forms in England at this moment, and they may all have perished in a century; but the spirit of Christ's teaching will have remained, expanding to suit the new thoughts of men, and the progress of the whole nation. Therefore, it is contained in the idea of Christianity that its outward form should be not only subject to continual change, but should even be different at one and the same time in different nations.

Hence, the fighting and opposition of sect to sect which has been objected to Christianity is one of those things which flow from its very nature. If its founder left it unsystematised, it was sure to be systematised in

different ways, and these differences would produce contention. Contention is an evil, but it is a less evil than the spiritual stagnation which would have followed upon a hard and fast system.

Moreover, if Christianity was to expand, it was necessary that its truths should be the subjects of controversy, that different and opposing systems might place now one of its ideas, now another, in vivid light; so that, by the slow exhaustion of false views, it might come forth clear at last, unrobing itself as a mountain from the mists of the dawn.

Make any religion into a system, define its outlines clearly, and, before long, there will be no movement of thought about it, no enthusiasm of feeling, no vital interest felt in its ideas. It suits the time at which it is put forward, but when that time has past, it has nothing to say to men. But let system be foreign to it—let its original ideas be capable of taking various religious forms-and it will have the power of expanding for ever, of becoming systematic without ever binding itself to system; changing its form not only in every time but in every country, and growing in a direct ratio to the growth of the world.

Therefore we say, the original want of system in Christ's teaching ensures its power of expansion, and that fits it for the use of the Race, now and hereafter.

But if this were all, it would prove nothing. There must be a quality in a religion destined to be of eternal fitness for men which directly appeals to all men, or else its want of system will only minister to its ruin. And if that quality exist, it must be one which we