hopes which in their minds had gathered about His person were
shattered: their very faith in GOD Himself, and in the goodness of
GOD, was for the time being torn up by the roots. Nothing but an event
as real and as objective as the Crucifixion itself could have reversed
for them this impression of sheer catastrophe. The resurrection of
Jesus, which was for them the wonder of wonders, not only restored to
them their faith in Him as the Christ of GOD, now "declared to be the
Son of GOD with power by the resurrection from the dead"; it also
relaid for them the foundations of faith in GOD and in His goodness
and love upon a basis of certainty henceforth never to be shaken.
"This is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you,
that GOD is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

Meanwhile what of Jesus Himself--this Christ, through their
relationship to whom they had come by this new experience of the
reality of GOD? In symbolical vision they saw Him ascend up into the
heavens and vanish from bodily sight: in pictorial language they spoke
of Him as seated at GOD'S right hand. They were assured nevertheless--
and multitudes in many generations have echoed their conviction--that
He was still in their midst unseen, their living Master and Lord.
Instinctively they prayed to Him. Through Him they made their approach
to the Father. He had transformed for them their world. He was the
light of their lives. In Him was truth. He was their way to GOD.

All the great movement of Christian thought in the New Testament is
concerned in one way or another with the working out of this
experienced significance of Jesus. The maturest expression of what He
meant to them is contained in the great reflective Gospel--an
interpretation rather than a simple portrait of the historical Jesus--
which is ascribed by tradition to S. John. The Christ of the Fourth