Now comes our second question how shall we think of the inward, the spiritual, the eternal Christ? The first interpreters, notably Paul and John, early in their experience, came to think of Christ as a cosmic Being. They read the universe in the light of His revelation and soon used His name to name the entire manifestation of God: “In Him,” says Paul, “all things consist.” “All things were made by Him,” says John, “and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” John 1, 2, 3. It was through Him that they first learned that God is Spirit, it was through Him that their own spiritual life was heightened and that they became conscious of a Spirit surging into their own souls and they connected this whole wider manifestation of God with Him. They were right too in doing so. Christ’s revelation of God had produced such spiritual effects upon them that they could now find Him within themselves, for God’s spiritual presence in us is always proportioned to our capacity to have Him there. And then, too, they were now for the first time able to interpret that which they felt within themselves. If they found God, it was because they had found Christ.
But they were right in a deeper sense. If we think of the historical Christ, as I have tried to set forth, as the manifestation of the Divine and the human in a single personal Life then wherever man finds God humanly revealed he properly names the revelation with the historic name. The historic incarnation was no final event. It was the supreme instance of God and man in a single life--the _type_ of continuous Divine-human fellowship. God’s human revelation of Himself is not limited to a single date. As Athanasius so boldly said: He became man that we might become divine. Christ is the prophesy of _a new humanity_--a humanity penetrated with the life and power of God and this continued personal manifestation of God through men is Christ inwardly and spiritually revealed.
It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches man directly. No person is insulated. As ocean floods the inlets, as sunlight environs the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in _a tergo_. Not so with God. He can be received only through appreciation and conscious appropriation. He comes only through doors that are _purposely_ opened for Him. A man may live as near God as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not find Him. He may be “closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet,” and still be missed. Historical Christianity is dry and formal when it lacks the immediate and inward response to our Great Companion; but our spirits are trained to know Him, to appreciate Him, by the mediation of historical revelation. A person’s spiritual life is always dwarfed when cut apart from history. Mysticism is empty unless it is enriched by outward and historical revelation. The supreme education of the soul comes through an intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ of history. One who wished to feel the power of beauty would go to some supreme master of color and form who could exhibit them on canvas and not merely lecture about them. One who desired to feel the power of harmony would go, not to the boy with his harmonica, but to the Beethovens or Mozarts of the race who have revealed what an instrument and a human hand can do. So he who wishes to realize and practice the presence of God must inform himself at the source and fount, must come face to face with Him who was the highest human revelation of God. No one of us can interpret his own longings or purposes until he reads them off in the light of some loftier type of personality. That person understands himself best who grows intimate in fellowship with some noble character. And any man who wishes to discover the meaning of the inward voice and to interpret the divine breathings which come to human souls needs to be informed and illuminated by the supreme revelation of the ages.