Christianity is the restatement of a very old doctrine. It is not new. The Gospel narratives are dependable and true, but only because they are integrated with the spiritual revelation of the past, and are being reinterpreted today in the terms of 'Christ.'

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Therefore, mankind being more evolved and intelligent, that reinterpretation will more readily and adequately meet humanity's needs. But it is nothing new, and Christ never proclaimed Himself in such terms.

He foretold of a new age and a coming kingdom of God. Out of the wide sweep of time and out of the aeonian grasp of God's consciousness, mankind is only today beginning to see a world and a humanity ready for the new revelation - a revelation which will be based upon truly Christ-like ethics and vital Christ-like truths.

That for which Christ stood, the truth which He embodies, is so old that there has never been a time when it was not present as a need in the human consciousness, and yet it is so new that there will never be a time when the story of the birth and the death of the world Savior will not be of the utmost moment to man.

The Crucifixion and the Cross of Christ are as old as humanity itself. Both are symbols of the eternal sacrifice of God as He immerses Himself in the form aspect of nature and thus becomes God immanent as well as God transcendent.

We have seen that Christ must be recognized, first of all, in the cosmic sense. The cosmic Christ has existed from all eternity. This cosmic Christ is divinity, or spirit, crucified in space.

When Christ died upon the Cross, He rendered up the form aspect and identified Himself as Man with the life aspect of Deity. He thereby liberate us from the form side of life, of religion and of matter, and demonstrated to us the possibility of being in the world and yet not of the world, living as souls, released from the trammels and limitations of the flesh, while yet walking on earth.

To the very deeps of its being humanity is tired of death. Its only rest lies in the belief that the ultimate victory is over death, and that some day death will be abolished. It may be said that the race is so imbued with the thought of death that it has been the line of least resistance for theology to emphasize the death of Christ, and to omit to lay the major emphasis upon the renewal of life to which that death was the prelude.

This practice will end because the world today demands a living Christ rather than a dead Savior. It demands an ideal so universal in its implications - so inclusive of time and space and life - that the constant explanations and the endless attempts to make theology conform to the requirements of a deeply sensed vital truth will no longer be needed.

The world has outlived the thought of a wrathful God who demands a blood sacrifice. Intelligent people today must agree that "...modern thought does not clash with primitive Christian ideas; but in regard to the propitiation for these evil inclinations the case is different.

We can no longer accept the appalling theological doctrine that for some mystic reason a propitiatory sacrifice was necessary. It outrages either our conception of God as almighty or else our conception of Him as all-loving.

Humanity will accept the thought of a God who so loved the world that He sent His Son to give us the final expression of the cosmic sacrifice and to say to us, as He did upon the Cross: "It is finished." 

We can now "enter into the joy of the Lord." Men are learning to love, and the will, and do, repudiate a theology which makes of God a force of hardness and cruelty in the world, unparalleled by men.

The whole trend of human life tends to repudiate those ancient tenets which were founded in fear, and instead, courageously faces the facts and the responsibilities which are inherent in our spiritual birthright.

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