him
there may be awakened the life of divinity, which is his true human
life. Is it not glorious, this absolute simplicity of the Christian
faith? It is not primarily a truth; it is a person, it is He who walked
in Galilee and Judea, who sat in the houses of mankind, who hung upon
the cross, in order that He might perfectly manifest how God could live
and how man could suffer in the obedience to the life of God, and then
sent forth out of that inspiration and said, "Lo, I am with you always,
doing this very thing, being this very Saviour, even to the end of the
world." That which the Christian man believes to-day as a Christian,
whatever else he may believe in his private speculation, in his personal
opinion, is this: The life of God manifest in Jesus of Nazareth and
thenceforth going out into the world wakening the divine capacity in
every man.

You say, "How can a man believe that? What evidence is there of it?" The
personal evidence of Jesus Christ himself. It is the self testimony of
Christ that makes the assurance of the Christian faith. Does that sound
to you all unreasonable? Do you turn here in your pew or in your aisle
and say, "After all, it is the old story which I have tested and know to
be untrue."

Suppose yourself back there in Jerusalem. Suppose the self testimony
came to you from the very person of Jesus Christ. Suppose the words that
He absolutely said and the deeds that He absolutely did bore to you a
testimony that some greater than a human life was there, and that then,
as you pressed close to Him and became a part of His life, you found
your own life awakened and became a nobler man, ashamed to sin, aspiring
after holiness, thinking noble thoughts, lifting yourself not above the
earth, but lifting yourself with the whole great earth, which then is
taken up into the presence of God and made sacred through and through. I
know no man in whom I trust except by the personal evidence that he
bears to me of himself. I know no man's nature finally but by that
testimony which the nature gives me of him. Bring me all evidence that
the man is trustworthy, and then when I am convinced I will go and stand
in the presence of that man himself, and he shall tell me. So the world
stood, so the world stands to-day in the presence of Jesus Christ. His
presence on earth is an historic fact. The words that He spoke are
written down in a true record. The deeds that He did are the history of
the manifestations of His