n they believed Jesus' own word and
looked to Him for the divinity which He said was present with Him upon
the earth. Then His life went on, and by and by fulfilled itself in the
one great action in which He declared those two things which He longed
to know, the life and newness of God and the power of their human
nature. He gave His life for them, indeed, in the awful suffering that
preceded and that culminated upon the cross. He gave His life in
crucifixion for them, and in that crucifixion opened the divinest doors
of His life, when opening a sanctuary of sorrow; and He bade them enter
in and know there the absolute life of God and the great capacity of
human nature to sacrifice itself for God. And before He died, and
afterward, He again appeared to them. He spoke great words which said
that this was not the end of things, that after they had ceased to see
Him and touch Him and hear His voice He still was to be present in the
world. He said that the mysterious presence of those who had passed
away, which all had known, was to culminate and be fulfilled in Him. "I
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Wherever you "are
together in my name, there am I." Words and words and words again like
those He spoke, in which He declared that He was to be an everlasting
presence among mankind, and therefore that which had taken place in the
life of those disciples might forever take place; that that which Jesus
had done in the days when He was present upon the earth should be
continually repeated, in that He was forever to do that which He had
been doing, giving Himself to human kind for their inspiration, for
their elevation, for their correction, for their reproof, as He had been
doing, their salvation, as He had been doing in those days in which He
was here among them. Men have believed that simply. They have recognized
that word of Christ, and found the fulfilment of it in their own lives;
and that has been the Christian religion,--just exactly what it was in
the old days when Jesus was present in Jerusalem and Galilee. Just
exactly what men did then men have been doing in all the generations
that have come since. Just exactly what was possible then is possible
for them now--that we may become the followers of that same Christ and
the receivers through Him of the divine life, by which alone the human
life is perfected and fulfilled.

That is the Christian religion. That is the Christian faith. Is it not
clear and