upon the earth, they have
been content to say that man must give up the power of thought in order
that he might enter into the Christian life and attain to all the
purposes of the Christian discipline, they have been content to say that
man must give up the noblest power of his nature in order to enter upon
the highest life. Well might a man hesitate, hesitate whatever the
blessings that were offered to him in the fulness of the Christian
experience, if he were called upon to give up that which made the very
centre and glory of his life, that which linked him most immediately to
the God from whom he sprang. It would be as if in the storm the ship
should cast over its engine in order to save its own life. The ship
might be saved a little while from going down in the depths of despair,
but it never would reach the port to which it had been bound; it never
would accomplish the purpose of the voyage upon which it had set forth.
Let us put absolutely away from, us all such thoughts. Let us come under
the inspiration of Jesus Christ Himself, who says to us, in these words
which we have repeatedly read to one another, that it is the truth that
is to make us free, and that the entrance of the man therefore into that
freedom is the largest freedom, of every region of man's life.

I want to speak to you of the way in which my Master, Jesus Christ,
appeals to the intelligence of man, of the way in which He comes to us
in the noblest part of our nature, and claims us there for our true life
within Himself. I would feel altogether wrong if I let you depart, if I
allowed you to meet here with me week after week and say these words
which I am privileged to speak to you unless I did thus claim that the
Christian life is the largest life of the human intellect, that in it
the noblest and central powers of man shall attain to their true
liberty. It is given for us perhaps to ask ourselves for one moment why
it is that man thinks, is ready to think, that he must give up the very
noblest part of his life, his powers of thinking, in order that he may
enter into Christianity. It seems to me that there are certain reasons
for it which we can see; but how fallacious those reasons are! Is it not
partly because man, when he is called upon to live Jesus' life, when he
is called upon to be a spiritual creature, immediately sees that he is
entering into a new and different region from that in which his reason
has always been exercised. He has been d