" And last of all, in that antithesis so full of
instruction: "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam
was made a life-giving spirit."

Adam's children we all are in the possession of a physical nature full
of possibilities of moral good and evil: the question for us is, shall
we be Christ's children too? I cannot assert that this is the only line
in which we can inherit life: heroes and saints before and apart from
Christ would rise up to rebuke me if I did. God's tender mercies, even
of the most intimately spiritual kind, are over all His human children.
But it is the line in which we naturally stand; and to stand in it I
count the highest privilege of our humanity. I will lay down no
conditions of salvation where I believe Christ has laid none down: I
will not attempt to compare his disciples with those of other masters: I
am content to know that here is a fountain of living waters, which flows
for us, and at which those who drink shall never thirst again. I will
not even try to define the process by which a strong, bright,
master-soul pours itself into poorer and narrower spirits, for I rest
joyfully in the certain knowledge that it is so. Is it not possible to
forget the fact too much in discussing the rationale of the process? "In
the last day, that great day of the feast," when the silver trumpets
were sounding, and the priests were bearing up to the temple court the
water which they had drawn from that brook Siloam which "flows fast by
the oracles of God," "Jesus stood and cried, 'If any man thirst, let him
come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the Scripture has
said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'" There is the
whole secret. All true life is contagious. Not the dull and dead, but
only the living, can quicken. Fragrance makes fragrant: sweetness
imparts sweetness: strength begets strength. How many of us have
learned integrity from an upright father, and breathed in the confidence
of faith at a mother's knee? They gave because they had; and Christ was
their fountain-head.

The religious life, to some imaginations, presents itself as inclining
largely to the side of the passive and the negative. It is abstinence
from evil quite as much as eager realization of good. On this view, an
air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and
mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon
God. It is sweet rather than strong: more