The connection between Jesus and the Christ is not that of an historical figure and a metaphysical entity. Christ is divine history - the history of salvation, inwoven in every child born of woman and continuously unfolded throughout the ages. Jesus is that same history condensed, telescoped into the few years of one man's life. The whole vast history of God matures in a man like a seed through all the pains and violence of the world, and then, in a short interval, what he had heard about another begins to awaken in him and comes out petal by petal until the flower is Christ and he is it. So everyone becomes Jesus, because the unfolding happens in everyone: the ages-long history and the few years match, and are telescoped. Neville, fifty-eight when he says this, insists it does not take fifty years - once it starts it cannot be stopped.