the restoring and invigorating influence
oftener flowed from a deeper source. The physical renewal came as the
result of a spiritual quickening. He reached the body through the
soul. The order was, first, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"; then, "Arise
and walk." If the spirit is thoroughly alive, the body more quickly
recovers its lost vigor. And it was mainly in giving peace to troubled
consciences and rest to weary souls that He conferred upon those who
received Him the great boon of life.

Thus Jesus proved Himself "the Prince of Life." In the early ages of
the Church the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, came to be described as
"the Lord and Giver of Life"; but that was because He was believed to
be the Continuator of the work of Jesus--the spiritual Christ.

There seems to be in this conception a great and beautiful revelation
of the essential nature of Christianity. There are many ways of
conceiving of this, but I am not sure that any one of them is more
significant than that which we are now considering. Those words of
Jesus to which I have before referred are wonderful words when we come
to think upon them. They occur in that discourse in which He describes
Himself first as the Good Shepherd, and contrasts Himself with the
thieves and robbers who have been ravaging the flock. "The thief
cometh not," He says, "but that he may steal and kill and destroy; I
came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly," Have we
not here the great fundamental distinction between men--the line that
separates the evil from the good, the just from the unjust, the sheep
from the goats--that distinction which Jesus marks so clearly in His
parable of judgment, and which must never, in our interpretations or
philosophizings, be blotted or blurred? Some are life-givers; some are
life-destroyers. "The thief cometh not but that he may steal and
kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and may have it
abundantly."

I do not suppose that Jesus meant in this to declare that there is a
large class of persons whose entire purpose it is to steal and kill
and destroy; probably there are none so malevolent that they do not
cherish some kindly impulses and perform some generous deeds. It is a
distinction between acts, or perhaps between tendencies of character,
that He is making. He speaks in the concrete, as He always does; but
He expects us to make the proper application of His words. The fact to
which He guides our thought is this--tha