Nineteen hundred years ago it was written of Him: "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." And that is still true! With our legends, our creeds, our Ecclesiastical formulas and canting phrases with which we have thought to do Him honour, we have obscured his personality and smothered His teaching. The moment has come, thanks to the patient work of scholars, to re-discover Him, to see Him as He is. And, seeing Him, to become like Him. Man is going to become like Christ. By laws which are at present beyond our knowledge to enunciate, we become like the person we admire.
The purpose I have in these talks is that we may get back to the Carpenter. To do that we shall use one of those four little pamphlets, which have been handed down to us out of a much larger mass of literature, as being the earliest and most accurate impressions which survive.
