work against the will of men
who submit themselves to it.

But it is not only because of that consentient chorus of many
voices--the testimony of which wise men will not reject--that the word
is 'a faithful saying.' This is no place or time to enter upon anything
like a condensation of the Christian evidence; but, in lieu of
everything else, I point to one proof. There is no fact in the history
of the world better attested, and the unbelief of which is more
unreasonable, than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if Christ rose
from the dead--and you cannot understand the history of the world unless
He did, nor the existence of the Church either--if Jesus Christ rose
from the dead, it seems to me that almost all the rest follows of
necessity: the influx of the supernatural, the unique character of His
career, the correspondence of the end with the beginning, the broad seal
of the divine confirmation stamped upon His claims to be the Son of God
and the Redeemer of the world. All these things seem to me to come
necessarily from that fact. And I say, given the consentient witness of
nineteen centuries, given the existence of the Church, given the effects
of Christianity in the world, given that upon which they repose--the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead--the conclusion is sound,
'This is a faithful saying . . . that He came into the world to save
sinners.'

Men talk, nowadays, very often as if the progress of science and new
views as to the evolution of creatures or of mankind had effected the
certitude of the Gospel. It does not seem to me that they have in the
smallest degree. 'The foundation of God standeth sure,' whatever may
become of some of the superstructures which men have built upon it. They
may very probably be blown away. So much the better if we get the rock
to build upon once more. A great deal is going, but not the Gospel. Do
not let us be afraid, or suppose that it will suffer. Do not let us
dread every new speculation as if it was going to finish Christianity,
but recognise this--that the fact of man's sin and, blessed be God! the
fact of man's redemption stands untouched by them all; and to-day, as of
old, Jesus Christ is, and is firmly manifested to be, the world's
Saviour. Whatsoever refuge may be swept away by any storms, 'Behold, I
lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure
foundation: He that believeth shall not be confounded.'

III. Lastly, notice the consequen