ways, which are yet both quite consistent with all that had previously been made known of their characters. So a man sometimes acts in such a way that even those who have known him well exclaim, "I never knew he had it in him." The whole of a man's conduct is expressive of his character and purpose in some degree, but these exceptional acts are the true revelation of him.

So it may be with God Himself. The routine of nature manifests His Will; but there may come occasions where action of a special and specially characteristic quality is required and the action so taken may be in an especial degree revealing; such acts are commonly called miracles.

We reach, then, a conception of God as at once comprehending the entirety of things in the whole range of space and of time, and also as constantly at work within the process of His own creation, shaping it as a master-artist till in its completeness-not its result only but its whole course-He finds the good for which He made it. As He so works, He follows for the most part the routine that is apparent to us as the uniformity of nature; but there are also occasions when His own constancy requires that in face of special emergencies He should act in an exceptional way; such action will be in a special measure a revelation.

He made the world for its value; this comes to actualisation in man, and for what man can give Him -loyalty and obedience and even love-He cares more than for the splendour of starry heavens or the delicacy of insects' wings. But man, through his very sense of value, has chosen a way which is not God's to pursue his own good. The evil or sin of the world-in any case a problem worthy of divine solution -culminates in the self-will of man, in whom most of all, hitherto at least, the joy of creation was to be sought. Here is an emergency sufficient if any could be for a special and specially revealing act.

PART III

THE CORE OF THE ARGUMENT

CHAPTER VII

THE GODHEAD OF JESUS CHRIST

If He

"Our Lord is the crown, nay, the very substance of all Revelation. cannot convince the soul, no other can. The believer stakes all faith on His truth, all hope on His power. If the man of science would learn what it is that makes believers so sure of what they hold, he must study with an open heart the Jesus of the Gospels; if the believer seeks to keep his faith steady in the presence of so many and sometimes so violent storms of disputation, he will read of, ponder on, pray to, the Lord Jesus Christ.”—ARCHBISHOP TEMPLE.

We have been led by the argument to a view of the universe which requires for its confirmation a divine act in the midst of history. We have found that God is such as to act in a special way if occasion demand; we have found an occasion which demands such an act. If there is no such act, we must either compose ourselves to await it as the Jews were taught to await the coming of the Christ, or else we must abandon our whole view of life and the world.

But there is record of a divine act such as the need requires. It is the story of the Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, and the consequent coming of the Holy Spirit.

For this act the record tells of long preparation, and we can trace the same preparation at work beyond the record. We see how the gift of Law, which ancient Rome brought to the world, and the peace which she imposed, provided an arena for the proclamation of the divine act. We see how the gift of Philosophy, which ancient Greece had brought, provided a means of formulating and so handing on the