So far as I can gather from what he says, he does not regard the Christ as historical, though he does not very clearly draw the line as to how he would separate, historically, the Jesus of the Gospels from that Ideal which he names “The Christ.” He says that he and many other people find themselves beset by certain difficulties: “Are the claims to be presently set forth made on behalf of a spiritual ‘Ideal’ to which we may provisionally apply the word ‘Christ,’ or are they predicated of Jesus?” Then he goes on to say that insistence on limitations of knowledge, restrictions of outlook, evasions of issues, and disillusionments of experience, true enough of a historic Jesus, may not be wholly relevant to a spiritual “Christ Ideal,” expanding and enriching through the ages into “the Christ that is to be.” Then he says it would be still less applicable to one who is regarded as the “fulness of Godhead,” “Very God of very God.” That, practically, is his thesis, and he tries to show in this article that very many difficulties might be avoided if Christians were willing to recognise a Christ Ideal side by side with the historical Jesus. In that way they might evade some of the difficulties which are pressed against the conception of Jesus as the Christ by large numbers of people who find their faith challenged and themselves in difficulties by these objections which are put to them both inside and outside the Church. He quotes Dr. Fairbairn, writing on Christ in Modern Theology. “If He knows as God while He speaks as man, then His speech is not true to His knowledge, and within Him a bewildering struggle must ever proceed to speak as He seems and not as He is. If He had such knowledge, how could He remain silent as He faced human ignorance, and saw reason wearied with the burden of all its unintelligible mysteries? If men could believe that once there lived on this earth One who had all the knowledge of God, yet declined to turn any part of it into science for man, would they not feel their faith in His goodness taxed beyond endurance?” That view (which appears to be adopted by Mr. Roberts) does not seem to me necessarily at all a sound one, and it is by no means certain that a man speaking in a particular age to people among whom great limitations of knowledge existed, and with a particular object before Him—not to enlarge the bounds of science, but to deepen spirituality and lay a strong foundation of morals—that such a Teacher, however highly illuminated, however much speaking as the very Spirit of God, would say all that He knew with regard to external facts and external phenomena, with the certainty of making very difficult the reception of His message on points enormously important—on points, in fact, of vital and essential need for the higher spiritual progress of man. Hence it does not appear to me that Dr. Fairbairn’s issue is at all well taken. Every great teacher—not for the moment considering the special divinity of Christ or Jesus—who is speaking to people less instructed than himself is under a similar difficulty. If on matters of ordinary scientific knowledge he is illuminated where they are not, the very fact that he presses that upon them would bewilder and confuse. You cannot enable the human intellect to evolve at what might be called a supernatural rate. It is capable of growth, and often of rapid growth, but if you try to force it beyond the rapid natural growth, you will only perplex, bewilder, and confuse; and if your aim is not, broadly, to increase scientific knowledge, which man will inevitably find out for himself after a time, but to help him to the things which need spiritual illumination in order that he may receive them, then such a difficulty as is put here as to the inner bewilderment which would be felt by the speaker to speak as he seems, and not as he is, would not be bewilderment at all, but a quite deliberate limitation of what he said, with a view to the effectiveness of his work, and that which he desired to give to the people of his time. That is true necessarily of every great prophet, of every highly inspired man; and the greatness of the inspiration would chiefly be shown, not in the amount of physical knowledge which he might give, but rather in his avoidance of certain difficulties which, when the race grew more learned, might come in their way and complete their ideas. That is to say, he would evade the scientific difficulty as far as he possibly could, and would do it deliberately, knowing that that was not his particular work, and that he could not do his own work if he turned aside in this direction. So that, as far as I am personally concerned, looking on this from the standpoint of the Theosophist and Occultist, these difficulties to me do not exist. I realise that they must always be found where one who is superhuman—I object to the word supernatural—comes in any age of the world’s history in order to teach a new conception of religion, and in order to adapt what he is giving to the civilisation which he intends to influence.
It appears to me that it is a perfectly rational and necessary thing that the growth of knowledge from the ordinary standpoint should be left to work its way out along the lines of intellectual development; anything less than that will check intellectual growth inevitably, for intellectual growth can only come about by the freest of thought, the freest of discussion, the most absolute liberty to challenge everything and to controvert anything which appears to be illogical. The condition of intellectual growth is that of complete freedom, and any sort of limitation which is put upon it by the knowledge of a great teacher will only check that intellectual evolution which is essential for the future growth of man. Many similar difficulties, of course, are made with regard to all inspired Scriptures, and for that reason it seems to me that it is well that we distinguish definitely between the spiritual work of the spiritual teacher and the scientific investigation of the scientific student; that it should be realised that these two departments of human activity work under different laws to a very great extent, and that that which is spiritually known cannot always be justified to the intellect until that intellect becomes spiritually enlightened—that is, that you have to deal in man with a being who is fundamentally a spiritual being, in whom the divine Spirit becomes incarnate, embodied, but in whom that divine Spirit is going to unfold along three great lines of unfoldment which we find in all human consciousness, which we recognise as in the divine nature itself. It has to unfold to an ordered Activity which should be truly in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the expression of the divine nature in this manifested form. It has to unfold along the Intellectual line, and that unfoldment must be left utterly unfettered. It has also to evolve along that line which in its lowest stages is emotion, in its higher stages is religion; and that spiritual unfolding, the highest characteristic of Spirit showing itself out as Will, has to be developed from above more than from below, to come downward by illumination more than to climb upward by reasoning. Unless we can understand this complicated nature of man in whom divinity is gradually unfolding and mastering matter at every stage of its unfolding, mastering, purifying it, ultimately spiritualising it; in all its earlier stages limited by the matter that it has yet failed to master, gradually making it plastic and ductile, and then in its higher stages having utterly subdued it to its own purposes—unless we can understand that that is a rough outline of human evolution, we shall constantly find ourselves in difficulties between the intellectual growth and the spiritual unfolding. Hence whenever a man comes to earth in whom divinity is far more manifestly unfolded than in his fellow-men, he can only shed down upon them illumination from the spiritual region, stimulate their aims, but not control their intellect. If that be realised, then the whole of these difficulties, which are being made at the present time about the obvious limitations outwardly of the knowledge of the supreme Christian Teacher, will entirely fall out of court, and you will see that He was speaking to the people of His day in the way that He could best affect them in order to help forward their evolution from the standpoint where they were, and was not the least intent on showing out His enormous knowledge, which would only have crushed rather than assisted.
Suppose for the moment you can take that way of looking at human evolution—and it seems to me the most rational way of looking at it—then we come to deal with this special manifestation of the Teacher who was the Founder of Christianity, a Hebrew speaking to Hebrews, and having to reconcile the speaking to the people of His day with the speaking to people of generations after generations, through centuries and perhaps millennia to come, then we should be perfectly able to realise that we are here face to face with one of those supreme divine manifestations, and that in studying it we must be ready to separate between the Teacher of religion and the man speaking to the men of His day, and accepting their limitations in order that He might reach them effectively. I want to carry you very much further than that in what I say; all that might very well be accepted by any rational and intelligent Christian, especially if he finds himself able to realise that what is said of the divinity of Jesus is true at a very much lower level of all His brethren, that all men are fundamentally and essentially divine; that that which was said by the great teacher S. Paul: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” and that which was answered by Jesus Himself, when he was challenged for calling Himself the Son of God: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods, and ye are all the children of the Highest?” is literally true. If you realise all that is implied in that statement, that He is the first among many brethren, you will see that every Son of Man is potentially, and will hereafter be actually, a Son of God, meaning by that that Deity will unfold within him, and that a manifestly divine humanity is the natural goal of evolution.
One realises, in looking at an article like this, that by the mystic Christ—that is what the writer means—he means that in the Epistles a somewhat different view is taken from that of the Gospels, the one dealing specially with an historical person, the other with an indwelling Spirit. He realises that when the Apostle Paul declares to his converts that he is travailing in birth for them until Christ be formed in them, when he says in another passage that they are to develop to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, he is holding up before them a picture of the birth in the soul of this divine Spirit that he spoke of as Christ, and the gradual unfolding of that into the perfection of divine manhood. That is perhaps the most inspiring ideal that can well be put before Christian people, that not only outside them but within them, not only as an outer helper but as an indwelling Spirit, this idea of the Christ is to be realised, and that that unfolding of the Christ in man is a real fact in religious consciousness, making that highest stage of human evolution when the man becomes perfect, and there only remains before him the superhuman evolution after the human is finished.
But I want to put to you rather a different idea of this relation between Jesus and Christ. I recognise to the full the value of that mystic ideal, I have not one word to say against it; in fact it is one that, when I am speaking to Christians, I constantly proclaim—the absolute necessity of that indwelling presence. But there is another view of this great Being which may be less familiar to you, which is the view taken by those who are sometimes called Occultists, in a very special sense of the term. Let me put it to you quite baldly for the moment, and then work it out a little more. The view that we take of that great Teacher who came to the world some two thousand years ago is, that the child who was born and who grew up into manhood until the time of the Baptism was a man of marvellous purity, of extraordinary spiritual intuition, but a man that we should call a disciple; that it was his to train and guard that pure body in preparation for the incoming of the indwelling Christ, and that in the Gospel story it is the event of the Baptism which marks the coming of the Christ. Let me just recall the words to you for a moment: “When Jesus went down into the water, the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God came down upon Him like a dove, and abode upon Him. And a voice was heard from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him.’” Now it is clear that that event, marked out so distinctly in the Gospel story, must connote something of enormous importance. There was no need, as it were, for Him who was to be the Teacher to be baptised, and to receive the downcoming Spirit of the Most High, unless in that there was hid some profound spiritual truth, unless something was there afterward that was not there before; and it is then, from the occult point of view, that the Jesus became the Christ. But let me put it to you even a little more closely. Here, of course, is where the point of difference will probably arise in the minds of many in regard to what I am saying, for all might be willing to recognise that that might imply a great downflow of spiritual energy, of divine life. From our standpoint Jesus the Hebrew, the individual, the spiritual man, stepped out of the body that he had been dwelling in through all those years and preparing for the coming of his Lord, giving it over as a holy temple for the incoming of the supreme Teacher, so that the body became the habitation of the supreme Teacher for the three years of the ministry. Now that view, as many of you who have studied Christian history will know, was very widely held in the early Church; although it was condemned later as the Gnostic heresy, none the less it was quite orthodox until its formal condemnation within the Catholic Church, until the time that it was expelled. You find it in many of the early writings of the learned Christian teachers, you find it warred against by some others of the Christian teachers and doctors and bishops of the time, but none the less it was a view which had very wide prevalence in the early Church; it was accepted by large numbers of profoundly learned men; and although ultimately condemned as a heresy in the forms in which it was put, it might none the less not be improbable, even from the standpoint of the orthodox, that some truth was hidden in it in the broad sense, even if the form in which it was put forward in the Church of those days was justly condemned. My own view is that they were right, not in all the details of the way in which they put it, but in the fundamental fact. Let us suppose for a moment that they were so; then the question would necessarily arise—who is the Christ? And it is there that, as I said, there was one view that might be unfamiliar to you in the West, yet which, it seems to me, should be to the Christian a view full of beauty and full of hope for the future. There is only one Supreme Teacher of mankind. There is a great office above all those whom we Theosophists speak of as Masters—a Master of Masters, so to speak—the one Supreme Teacher. In Christendom you speak of him by the Greek name, a name which, as you know, was taken from the Grecian mysteries, of which a particular grade of initiation bore the name of the Christos, and the Adept who reached that grade was spoken of as the Christos. That was the name which was adopted in the early Church, according to the account in the Acts, to designate this great Teacher who had come to the world, and we should say, rightly adopted. It is an instance of spiritual insight recognising a great truth.
But now, supposing I ask you to go to the people of other religions for a moment, the ancient religions that we find in the eastern world. Suppose I ask a member of the most ancient of those, the Hindū faith: “Do you recognise in your religion one supreme World-Teacher above all religions, and not belonging to one exclusively—a universal Teacher?”—he would say, “of Gods and men”; over here you would say, “of Angels and men,” because the word there, Deva, is equivalent to your word Angel. He would at once say: “Why, yes; of course we recognise one Supreme Teacher at the head of all spiritual life and impulse, and we call him (pardon me if I use for the moment their name) the Jagat-Guru—the World-Teacher.” Supposing I went to another great religion there—the Buddhist—and I asked a member the same question: “Do you recognise in your religion a Supreme Teacher?” his answer would at once be, “Why, of course we do. There is only one who holds the place of Teacher over all Gods and all men; one Teacher only who is the Teacher of the world. We call Him the Bodhisattva—the Wisdom-Truth.” No nobler name could be given to Him; He is the Wisdom and the Truth; not the Buddha, as you may have expected me to say; He was not the Teacher. When He reached Buddhahood He passed away from earth. It is while He is going onwards to Buddhahood that He is known by this name of Wisdom-Truth, or Boddhisattva. During the whole of that period of teaching He has this name; and then when the supreme illumination comes to Him his office is finished, and He passes away from earth. Of course, as we know, the last Buddha remained in his body for some time, still teaching, but none the less the office of the Teacher is not to the Buddhist the Buddha, but he who is to be the Buddha—what you would call the Christ glorified and ascended, not the Christ on earth teaching and suffering. It is interesting to notice how in the various religions these same points arise and these same differences are seen under different names, so that we see that in these two greatest of eastern religions a Supreme Teacher is recognised. Now, from the occult standpoint, it is that Teacher who came as the Christ; and, supposing that all Christian people recognised that fact, they would reach the hearts of the eastern world far better than they do now, if, instead of telling them they must worship the Christ, they would say to them, “You are already worshipping Him under a different name,” which is supremely true; for it is the same Being who holds that office through all these thousands of years, the same supreme Perfection. He only comes into manifestation in order to help His younger brethren; He leaves that body when its utility for the moment is over; when, being so great in comparison with the people to whom He came, they could no longer tolerate His presence.
Now that is the view of the nature of the Christ which you would find among, say, Occultists or well-instructed Theosophists. They recognise in the Christ of Christendom the Supreme Teacher of the world, but they do not admit that He will come only once to the world; they reverence and honour Him now as still the Supreme World-Teacher, but they do not identify Him with the great disciple who took the Jewish name as Jesus, and who is now amongst us as the Master who is the Guide and Helper of the Christian Church. There is the point where the difference would come in. The orthodox Christian would claim Him as supreme over all religions, but he would hardly recognise difference between the disciple who has become the Master with the special Christian Church in His charge, and the Supreme Teacher who, while He certainly ever sends His benediction upon Christianity, sends it also upon the other great religions of the world. This is where I feel the difference might come in between myself and many of you. To us the great Master Jesus, who is, as you would also acknowledge—those of you, at least, who are members of the Church of England—thus still dwelling in a human body, still embodied literally, has that power which the Master on the higher planes of being has, of being spiritually in touch with all who call upon Him, with all who look to Him for guidance, but none the less still possesses a physical body. This is a point of enormous importance (although not as important as spiritual omnipresence), for it means to us, and it means to many Christians who think with us, and are Theosophists with us, a possibility of a close and personal relation, as of a disciple to a Master, which goes somewhat beyond the spiritual communion which every true Christian has with his great Teacher. How should I put that to convey exactly what I mean in clear and definite language? I must put it, I think, by giving a general principle with regard to these great Beings whom we speak of as Masters, divine men, men made perfect, which works through the whole of that great Brotherhood. They have many ways of working in the world; through their own subtle, spiritual bodies they work, sending out floods of blessing over the whole world; but, in addition to that spiritual impulse and spiritual blessing which flow into every heart that opens itself to receive them, with an ever present and potent power, there is an even closer and more specialised communion between the Spirit as embodied and those who are still wearing human bodies themselves, a possibility which the saints have realised of that personal and individual and specialised communion with their Master where they saw Him, heard Him; where to them He became, not only a spiritual presence, but an individualised Teacher, and even Friend; where they knew themselves as disciples, and knew Him as Master, which is the great mark, after all, of those who are specifically called the saints. For that close and intimate and specialised relationship the body is necessary; and hence, although sceptics have very often challenged that Article of the Church of England where it says that “He did truly take again His body, with flesh and bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” it does convey a fundamental and essential truth: the great Teacher is not only a spiritual Presence, He is a human though divine Being, who can be specifically and personally known. And if this latest impulse of Divine Wisdom which we call Theosophy is to be of use to Christendom, it will be along these lines of gradually winning Christians back to a conception that has been very largely lost—that their touch with their Divine Master must be much closer and more realised in the brain and human heart as contact of disciple and Teacher, than when they are thinking of Him as Deity, when they are regarding Him as the second Person in the Trinity. How far that will commend itself to many of you it is, of course, impossible for me to say; but let the outline, at least, be clear, so that it may be definitely understood. It is the conception of a Christ for whom a body was prepared, and prepared by His own well-loved disciple, who guarded, tended, trained it through the years of childhood, of youth, and of early manhood; a body surrendered to the incoming mighty Personage, who is the Supreme Teacher of the world, incoming at the point marked by the Baptism, worn until the time of the death, so that through the whole of that teaching, the ministerial life, it was not Jesus but the Christ who was the Teacher who founded Christianity. That body is laid aside, but He is still Lord of all religions, and He gives to His well-beloved disciple who became the Master Jesus this religion specifically as his charge, his work in the world. Other religions would have other Masters, but only one Supreme; others would look to other divine men made perfect, but would recognise beyond them this Master of Masters; and hence all religions draw together in the Supreme Teacher, and find there unity in that greatest and mightiest of all. So that every religion looks up to the one Teacher through Masters who specifically belong to the various faiths of the world. That is the view which is very generally held in the Theosophical Society, although none is bound to accept it, inasmuch as we impose no dogmas upon anyone; it is the view which is taken by those who have been most thoroughly instructed in this matter; and it seems to me that it is one of extreme interest to thoughtful people, even if they do not find themselves able to accept it.
That is, then, the view of the nature of Christ that I would submit to you; and if you look at it you will see that the whole of the criticisms to which I have referred fall to pieces, and no longer need disturb the hearts or consciences of any; for it would be recognised that you have here a manifestation of the same great Being, but not a unique manifestation, who adapts Himself to the needs of His time, gives out so much of His wisdom and truth as He thinks can be accepted by the people of His day and generation, but who, in giving it, gives with it an inspiring Spirit, which enables future generations to find more and more in that teaching, and as they themselves develop spiritually, to find ever greater depths in the teaching which had been given by the Christ. You will see how naturally that view passes on into the future, and why it is that many of us, believing that a new civilisation is dawning upon earth, also believe that the same Supreme Teacher will again be manifested, again to tread the earth as He trod it in Judæa, again to enlighten the world with spiritual wisdom, again to strike the keynote of a new civilisation, gathering all the religions of the world under that supreme teaching of His own, so that we look forward to a coming Christ as well as backward to a Christ in His last manifestation on the earth.