which is
given to us in our manlier years? It all comes of this awful way of
talking as if religion were the duty and not the inestimable privilege
of human kind. The Christ stands before us and says, "Come to me." You
say, "Must I?" And He answers, "You may." He will not even say, "You
must." You may. And duty loses itself in privilege, and the soul enters
into independence and escapes from its sins, fulfils its life, lays hold
of its salvation, becomes eternal, begins to live an eternal life in the
accepted and loving service of Christ.

Now just one word, my friends. If this be so, whether you to-day are
ready to make Christ your master and your friend or not, do not, I beg
you, let yourself say that it is a silly or unreasonable belief, thus to
know of a spiritual presence which is here among us, in which God is
really in humanity. Do not let yourselves say, my friends, that the man
who gives himself to Jesus Christ and earnestly tries to enter in deeper
and deeper into his life and tries to do his will, that he may know the
Christ and know himself in the Christ more and more--dare not call that
brother a fool, as you have sometimes called your Christian man who
watched scrupulously over his life and prayed, yes, prayed, the thing
you think perhaps the foolishest thing that man can do, the thing that
is the most reasonable act that any man does upon God's earth. If man is
man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing:
it is an infinitely foolish thing. When a man for the first time bows
down upon his knees and prays, "Oh! Christ, come unto me, reveal Thyself
to me, make me to know Thee, that I may receive Thee, make me to be
obedient that I may take Thee into my life," then that man has claimed
his manhood. I beg you, I implore you, I adjure you that, if you be not
ready to be Christian, you at least will know that the Christian life is
the only true human life, and that the man who becomes thoroughly a
Christian sets his face toward the fulfilment of his humanity, and so
for the first time truly is a man. "As many as received Him,"--so the
great Scripture word runs of this Christ of whom we have been
talking,--"As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the
sons of God."

Just think of it!--the sons of God! The power to become that to as many
as will receive the present Christ.

VI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.[1]

"He chose David also His servant, and took him away from the sh