gion as something simple. Attachment to Christ was a simple personal reality, illustrated by the tie which binds the bride, as a chaste virgin, to the bridegroom. It was not an ingenuity, nor a subtilty, nor a ceremony. It involved no speculation or argument. Its essence was personal and emotional, and not intellectual. The true analogy of religion, in short, is that of simple affection and trust. Subtilty may, in itself, be good or evil. It may be applied for a religious no less than for an irreligious purpose, as implied in the text. But it is something entirely different from the "simplicity that is in Christ." It is not to be supposed that religion is or can be ever rightly dissociated from intelligence. An intelligent perception of our own higher wants, and of a higher Power of love that can alone supply these wants, is of its very nature. There must be knowledge in all religion-knowledge of ourselves, and knowledge of the Divine. It was the knowledge of God in Christ communicated by St Paul that had made the Corinthians Christians. But the knowledge that is essential to religion is a simple knowledge like that which the loved has of the person who loves -the bride of the bridegroom, the child of the parent. It springs from the personal and spirit

ual, and not from the cognitive or critical, side of our being; from the heart, and not from the head. Not merely so; but if the heart or spiritual sphere be really awakened in us-if there be a true stirring of life here, and a true seeking towards the light-the essence and strength of a true religion may be ours, although we are unable to answer many questions that may be asked, or to solve even the difficulties raised by our own intellect.

The text, in short, suggests that there is a religious sphere, distinct and intelligible by itself, which is not to be confounded with the sphere of theology or science. This is the sphere in which Christ worked, and in which St Paul also, although not so exclusively, worked after Him. This is the special sphere of Christianity, or at least of the Christianity of Christ.

In distinguishing these spheres I am well aware that they are not contradistinguished. The sphere of theology is not outside that of religion, and even the simplest Christian experiences presuppose certain postulates which may be matters of philosophical and theological controversy. The practical side of our spiritual life cannot be disjoined from the intellectual, and I have no wish to disjoin them, and still less to

depreciate the necessity and importance of theological science for fixing and defining the great ideas upon which every form of the Christian life rests. This would be entirely opposed to my own point of view, which especially recognises the value of rational inquiry into all theological ideas whatever.

But admitting that the theological and religious spheres everywhere in the end run into one another, it is none the less true that the facts of the Christian life are infinitely simple in contrast with the questions of theology, and that there are hosts of difficulties in the latter sphere which in no degree touch the former. It is my present purpose to point this out, and to show in what respects the religion of Christ-the life of faith and hope and love which we are called upon to live in Him-is really apart from many intellectual and dogmatic difficulties with which it has been mixed up.

I. This is shown, first of all, in what I have already said of the comparative simplicity of the order of facts with which religion-religion as set forth by Christ-deals. Nothing can be simpler or more comprehensive than our Lord's teaching. He knew what was in man. He knew, more

over, what was in God towards man as a living Power of love, who had sent Him forth "to seek and save the lost;" and beyond these great facts, of a fallen life to be restored, and of a Higher Life of Divine love and sacrifice, willing and able to restore and purify this fallen life, our Lord seldom traversed. Unceasingly He proclaimed the reality of a spiritual life in man, however obscured by sin, and the reality of a Divine Life above him, which had never forsaken him nor left him to perish in his sin. He held forth the need of man, and the grace and sacrifice of God on behalf of man. And within this double order of spiritual facts His teaching may be said to circulate. He dealt, in other words, with the great ideas of God and the Soul, which can alone live in Him, however it may have sunk away from him. These were to Him the realities of all life and all religion. If there are those in our day to whom these ideas are mere assumptions-"dogmas of a tremendous kind," to assume which is to assume everything-at present we have nothing to do with their point of view. The questions of materialism, or what is called agnosticism, are outside of historical Christianity altogether. They were nothing to Christ, whose whole thought moved in a higher sphere of per

sonal Love, embracing this lower world. The spiritual life was to him the life of reality and fact; and so it is to all who live in Him and know in Him. The Soul and God are, if you will, dogmas to science. They cannot well be anything else to a vision which is outside of them, and cannot from their very nature ever reach them. But within the religious sphere they are primary experiences, original and simple data from which all others, come. And our present argument is, that Christ dealt almost exclusively with these broad and simple elements of religion, and that He believed the life of religion to rest within them. He spoke to men and women as having souls to be saved; and He spoke of Himself and of God as able and willing to save them. This was the "simplicity" that was in Him.

Everywhere in the Gospels this simplicity is obvious. Our Lord came forth from no school. There is no traditional scheme of thought lying behind His words which must be mastered before these words are understood. But out of the fulspiritual nature He spoke to the round Him, broken, helpless, the conflict with evil as He saw Spirit of the Lord is upon me,"