t is and was and is to be. Men
dwell upon what He was, upon what He is; I rather think to-day of what
He is to be. And when I see these young men here before me looking to
the future and not to the past,--nay, looking to the future and not to
the present, valuing the present only as it is the seed ground of the
future, the foundation upon which the structure is to rise whose
pinnacle shall some day pierce the sky,--I want to tell them of the
Jesus that shall be. In fuller comprehension of Him, with deeper
understanding of His life, with a more entire impression of what He is
and of what He may be to the soul, so men shall understand Him in the
days to be, and yet He shall be the same Christ still. The future
belongs to Jesus Christ, yes, the same Christ that I believe in and that
I call upon you to believe in to-day, but a larger, fuller, more
completely comprehended Christ, the Christ that is to be, the same
Christ that was and suffered, the same Christ that is and helps, but
the same Christ also who, being forever deeper and deeper and more
deeply received into the souls of men, regenerates their institutions,
changes their life, opens their capacities, surprises them with
themselves, makes the world glorious and joyous every day, because it
has become the new incarnation, the new presence of the divine life in
the life of man.

Men are talking about the institutions in which you are engaged, my
friends, about the business from which you have come here to worship for
this little hour. Men are questioning about what they care to do, what
they can have to do with Christianity. They are asking everywhere this
question: "Is it possible for a man to be engaged in the activities of
our modern life and yet to be a Christian? Is it possible for a man to
be a broker, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a mechanic, is it possible for a
man to be engaged in a business of to-day, and yet love his God and his
fellow-man as himself?" I do not know. I do not know what
transformations these dear businesses of yours have got to undergo
before they shall be true and ideal homes for the child of God; but I do
know that upon Christian merchants and Christian brokers and Christian
lawyers and Christian men in business to-day there rests an awful and a
beautiful responsibility: to prove, if you can prove it, that these
things are capable of being made divine, to prove that a man can do the
work that you have been doing this morning and will do this af