CHAPTER XII.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY.
No; the mystery hidden from ages and generations,[1] which none of the rulers of this world knew,[2] the mystery revealed finally by Jesus Christ and rejected by the Jews, was not the doctrine of the Trinity, nor anything speculative. It was the method and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not change the object for men,—righteousness. He made clear what it was, and that it was for all men, and that it was this:—his method and his secret.
This was the mystery, and the Apostles had still the consciousness that it was. To 'learn Christ,' to 'be taught the truth as it is in Jesus,' was not, with them, to acquire certain tenets about One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. It was, 'to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.'[3] And this exactly amounts to the method and secret of Jesus.
For Catholic and for Protestant theology alike, this consciousness, which the Apostles had still preserved, was lost. For Catholic and Protestant theology alike, the truth as it is in Jesus, the mystery revealed in Christ, meant something totally different from his method and secret. But they recognised, and indeed the thing was so plain that they could not well miss it, they recognised that on all Christians the method and secret of Jesus were enjoined. So to this
