tainly loses none of its supremacy and transforming power over the elements, but is bound to extend and wield that power to the full extent to which the ever advancing intelligence shall realize the dynamic power at its command, and understand or grasp the law of its control.

17. There is no extravagance then in believing, that as the living embodied soul of man rises or expands to that deeper insight and higher wisdom which characterized the Master of Galilee, that it shall possess and wield that God-like and commanding power ascribed to him. Indeed we should be inconsistent and illogical not to anticipate and expect this very thing. Hence the wisdom of the Master's formulation of the law, "According to your faith be it unto you!" "All things are possible to him that believeth!"

18. The faith of which the Master here speaks is not a blind credulity or an over-zealous fanaticism; but the calm and serene confidence of a clear-seeing intelligence, recognizing the absolute supremacy of embodied spiritual being and dynamic energy over the material elements and conditions, and the commanding power of its intelligence to wield that energy as it will, to the full extent to which, it grasps the occult law of its relation to the elements. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also!" To believe on the Christ in the sense he taught, is to believe not only that he lived the transcendent life

of wisdom and occult mastery recorded of him, but that in this he truly represented the immediate possibilities of every one of us. The secret of entering into that higher wisdom and mastery was his message to the world.

II.

THE THREE FACTORS INVOLVED.

19. GRANTING the essential truth of the gospel narrative concerning the life, works and teaching of Jesus, we have presented in them three fundamental things, which, in their distinguishing characteristics, are entirely unique and exceptional in the history of human experience. These are, specifically, a perfect and full-orbed personal life and character; a doctrine in perfect correspondence with that life, and of which the life itself was a complete exemplification; thus proving its perfection and divinity, and so its power to effect corresponding results in other lives; and, finally, a perfect thaumaturgic power corresponding with, and the legitimate and inevitable fruit of, the doctrine and the life, each depending upon, necessary to, and inseparable from the others. These three factors in their perfection, are essential to the perfect man, the fulfilling of the Divine Ideal in man, and are therefore possible to him. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion." Man will not stand in the image and likeness of God, until he has dominion over himself, the material world, and over all his relations to environment.

20. The personal life and character is a necessary expression of the ideal that dominates that life; and the ideal which any man holds, is a necessary product of the doctrine he entertains concerning the nature, limitations and possibilities of his own being, or of man as man. This doctrine of man and his possibilities will, in turn, be determined by the conception which one has of the nature and providence of God and His relation to men.

21. The basic doctrine held and promulgated by Jesus concerning the nature of God and His relation to man, and of man and his duties, privileges and possibilities under this Divine relationship, was in its fundamental conception and practical presentation, original with himself and differed in sharp contrast with the conceptions of God and of man, which lie at the basis of every other great religious system of the world. The connection of this doctrine of Jesus with his transcendent and perfect life, and hence its possible power to effect corresponding results in other lives, renders it of the utmost importance that the world should have at least a true, appreciative understanding of what that doctrine was. But this is impossible unless we repudiate the authority of the traditions of the elders, and go back of all the speculative theories of interpretation formulated in earlier and darker ages, to the direct teaching of the Master, and re-study his life and words in the better light of to-day, free as possible from all bias of dogmatism, whether of science or religion. This

epitome is meant to be an earnest and honest step in this direction.

22. The unique and exceptional life and character of Jesus was the legitimate fruit of his doctrine practically applied, and so the complete vindication of its all-embracing truth and divinity. The thaumaturgic power exercised by him on all suitable occasions (always and only to beneficent ends) was identified with and inseparable from the exceptional spiritual wisdom and all-penetrating insight attained by him, and which enthroned him on a plane of life vastly transcending the sense level of our common humanity, and above the spiritual attainment of all other men of whom we have authentic record. The real nature and source of this thaumaturgic power and higher wisdom, is the specific question considered in these pages.

23. The transcendent personal life, moral perfection, spiritual insight and thaumaturgic power, recorded of the Christ, go together. To drop out one of the four would sadly mar the picture of a perfect, divinely human personality presented in the Christ character of the New Testament story. Combined, they constitute the actualized, embodied, ideal man, the true type of a perfect humanity, wanting nothing.

24. Surely it will be conceded that whether the story be an ideal creation, or a veritable fact of history, if by any means all men could at once be lifted to the plane of divine realization it presents, every