c beauty of a purity of which men had despaired and of a meekness
at which they had utterly scoffed. It created the very conception of
charity, and broadened the limits of its obligation from the narrow
circle of a neighborhood to the widest horizons of the race. And while
it thus evolved the idea of humanity as a common brotherhood, even where
its tidings were _not_ believed--all over the world, wherever its
tidings _were_ believed, it cleansed the life and elevated the soul of
each individual man. And in all lands where it has moulded the
characters of its true believers it has created hearts so pure and lives
so peaceful and homes so sweet that it might seem as though those angels
who had heralded its advent had also whispered to every depressed and
despairing sufferer among the sons of men: "Though ye have lien among
the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove, that is covered with
silver wings, and her feathers like gold."

Others, if they _can_ and _will_, may see in such a work as this no
divine Providence, they may think it philosophical enlightenment to hold
that Christianity and Christendom are adequately accounted for by the
idle dreams of a noble self-deceiver and the passionate hallucinations
of a recovered demoniac. We persecute them not, we denounce them not, we
judge them not; but we say that, unless all life be a hollow, there
could have been no such miserable origin to the sole religion of the
world which holds the perfect balance between philosophy and popularity,
between religion and morals, between meek submissiveness and the pride
of freedom, between the ideal and the real, between the inward and the
outward, between modest stillness and heroic energy--nay, between the
tenderest conservatism and the boldest plans of world-wide reformation.
The witness of history to Christ is a witness which has been given with
irresistible cogency; and it has been so given to none but him.

But while even the unbeliever must see what the life and death of Jesus
have effected in the world, to the believer that life and death are
something deeper still; to him they are nothing less than a resurrection
from the dead. He sees in the cross of Christ something which far
transcends its historical significance. He sees in it the fulfilment of
all prophecy as well as the consummation of all history; he sees in it
the explanation of the mystery of birth, and the conquest over the
mystery of the grave. In that life he fi