ecause they do not want to
see it. It seems to me that the other is also often true, and it is
that upon which we would much rather dwell. Men sometimes hesitate at
Christianity and tremble, and will not enter into the great region that
is open to them, because they do not want it so intimately. The
critical, the sceptical disposition is very often born just of man's
perception of the glory of the life that is offered to him, and of the
intense desire that is at the bottom of his soul to enter into that
life. Who is the man that criticises the ship most carefully as she lies
at the wharf, that will see what capacity she has for the great voyage
that she has set before her? Is he the man who means to linger
carelessly upon the bank and never sail away, or the man who is obliged,
if she can sail across the ocean, to go with her? Just in proportion to
the depth of interest with which we look upon all Christian truth we
must be deep questioners with regard to the truth of that truth. We must
search into all its evidence. We must try to understand how it commends
itself to all our minds. But first of all we want to know certainly what
Christianity is, if it is able to deal with the thing with which we are
puzzling or never to give an intelligent definition of it.

How is it now? I go to a certain man and ask him, "Why do you not
believe in Christianity?" and he says, "It is incredible. I cannot
believe in it." "What is it that you cannot believe in?" and then he
takes forsooth some little point of Christian doctrine, some speculation
of some Christian teacher, some dogma of some Christian church, and
says, "That is incredible," as if that were Christianity. Over and over
again men are telling that they do not believe in Christianity, when the
real thing that they do not believe in is something that is no essential
part of Christian faith whatsoever. They never have given to themselves
a real definition of what the Christ and the Christianity in which they
are called upon to believe, into which they are invited to enter, really
is. The lecturer goes up and down the land and in the face of mighty
audiences he denounces Christianity. He declares it to be unintelligible
and absurd, to be monstrous and brutal. And when you ask what it is that
he is thus denouncing, what it is that he is thus convicting over and
over again, you find that it is something not simply which makes no part
of Christianity, but which is absolutely hostile