by a certain amount of vagueness, which allows the beholder to fill
in the details according to his own spiritual needs, and that no
ideal can be truly universal and permanents unless it have an
elasticity which will allow of this process in the minds of those who
contemplate it; that it cannot become thus elastic unless by the loss
of no inconsiderable amount of detail, and that thus the half, as Dr.
Arnold used to say, "becomes greater than the whole," the sketch more
preciously suggestive than the photograph. Hence far from deploring
the fragmentary, confused, and contradictory condition of the Gospel
records, he saw in this condition the means whereby alone the human
mind could have been enabled to conceive--not the precise nature of
Christ--but THE HIGHEST IDEAL OF WHICH EACH INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN SOUL
WAS CAPABLE. As soon as he had grasped these conceptions, which will
be found more fully developed in one of the later chapters of his
book, the spell of unbelief was broken.

But, once broken, it was dissolved utterly and entirely; he could
allow himself to contemplate fearlessly all sorts of issues from
which one whose experiences had been less varied would have shrunk.
He was free of the enemy's camp, and could go hither and thither
whithersoever he would. The very points which to others were
insuperable difficulties were to him foundation-stones of faith. For
example, to the objection that if in the present state of the records
no clear conception of the nature of Christ's life and teaching could
be formed, we should be compelled to take one for our model of whom
we knew little or nothing certain, I have heard him answer, "And so
much the better for us all. The truth, if read by the light of man's
imperfect understanding, would have been falser to him than any
falsehood. It would have been truth no longer. BETTER BE LED ARIGHT
BY AN ERROR WHICH IS SO ADJUSTED AS TO COMPENSATE FOR THE ERRORS IN