Lastly, let us fortify ourselves, and finish this brief statement of this somewhat novel view with Pascal's pregnant words. There are, he says, three orders of greatness. From all bodies put together you could not extract one thought, if there were not first a mind to conceive it. From all thoughts you could not draw a single movement of charity, if there were not there a heart to produce and feel it So far from needing to manifest themselves by the same attributes, these various kinds of greatness are absolutely independent of each other and even incommensurable. That which makes one shine forth would diminish or obscure the others. Alexander came with a pomp which dazzled the eyes and astonished the imaginations of mere carnal men. Archimedes had no need of the pomp of Alexander in order to impress the minds of men; his greatness, purely intellectual, was of an altogether different order. And, so, the Christ did not come with the _éclat_ of Alexander or Archimedes. His greatness is of another order still. It is in fact so different that neither the glory of the conqueror nor the potency of genius would add anything to it, and that it had need, the better to shine forth to all, to appear in lowliness and humiliation. Therefore He was humble, patient, gentle, holy towards God, merciful towards man, terrible to all the hosts of darkness. Without sin, without external goods, without the productions of science, He was in His own order. Oh, with what pomp, with what transcendent magnificence, did He appear to the eyes of the heart that discerns true wisdom!
We must therefore come to the religious consciousness of Jesus Christ as to the fountainhead from which the Christian stream has flowed. It is certain that we shall find in it the principle and essence of Christianity itself, for it would be too paradoxical to maintain that the Master alone was excluded from the benefit of the religion that He has bequeathed to all His disciples. No; we may affirm in all security that the principle of Christianity was at first the very principle of the consciousness of Christ. To determine the one will be to define the other.
What we call the religious consciousness of a man is the feeling of the relation in which he stands, and wills to stand, to the universal principle on which he knows himself to depend, and with the universe in which he sees himself to be a part of one great whole. If then we would know exactly what was the essential element in the consciousness of Jesus, what was the distinctive characteristic of His piety, we must ask in what relation did He feel Himself to stand towards God and towards the universe. The answer will be neither difficult nor uncertain. If there are matters on which the true thought of the Master remains obscure, nothing shines out with more evidence and continuity through all His teaching and His life than the religious attitude of His soul towards God and man.