has expressed and revealed Himself in a human life: that GOD has
spoken a Word, a Word which is the expression of Himself: and that the
Word is Christ. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou
not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." For
there is, in truth, something in Jesus of Nazareth which compels our
worship. And if we will take seriously the human Jesus we shall
discover in the end Deity revealed in manhood, and we shall worship
Him in whom we have believed.

But that, of course, is dogma: in other words, it is the deliberate
judgment of Christian faith. It is the expression, as a truth for the
mind, of the value which a soul which is spiritually awake comes to
set upon Jesus because it cannot do otherwise. A judgment like that is
the conclusion--it ought not to be taken as the starting-point--of
faith. There are many, of course, who are willing to begin by assuming
provisionally that it is true, upon the authority of others who bear
witness to it: and that is not an unreasonable thing to do, provided a
man afterwards verifies it in the experience of his own life. But
belief in the divinity of Jesus is too tremendous a confession lightly
to be taken for granted by mere half-believers of a casual creed.
Convictions worth having must sooner or later be fought for: they must
be won by the sweat of the brow. And if a man is not content
permanently to defer to the authority of others, he ought not to begin
by taking for granted the doctrine that Jesus is GOD. He ought to
begin as the Apostles began, by taking seriously the _Man_ Christ
Jesus.