obedient servant of man. The Son of man has come. You may at least
suppose it if you do not believe it. And if He came to-morrow morning,
would not this whole world lift itself up and answer Him? Who can say
what the hills and valleys and trees and oceans and seas would have to
say to Him who at last manifested that which the world had been waiting
and groaning for, the manifestation, the complete manifestation, of the
Son of God? That is the reason why I claim that miracles--I do not know
that there have not been fastened upon the miraculous power of Jesus
stories of things, thinking that they were done miraculously, which He
did by what we choose in our ignorance to call the ordinary powers of
nature--but I do know that the coming into the world must have been more
to this world, that it would have been the most unnatural and incredible
thing if the divine man coming here had been to the world and the world
had been to him only what it is to us.

And now the question comes to each one of us--for I must hasten on--how
shall a man get within the region of that which perhaps you recognize,
which I do not see how you can help believing, how shall a man get
within the region of that higher power and let it be the rule of his
life, let it manifest itself through him? How do you get within the
power of any force, my friends? Here is Christ, a force if He is
anything, not a spectacle, not a miracle, not a marvel, not wonderful to
look at, but a force to feel. How do you get within the power of any
force? You look out of your window, and men say the frost is freezing,
and you see your neighbors wrapping their cloaks about them and going
down the street as if they were cold. Men say that a storm is blowing,
and you see them shelter themselves against the storm that blows. How
will you make that storm a true thing for yourself? Go out into it. Let
the frost smite your cheek, let the rain beat into your face, let the
wind blow upon your back, and then you know by personal experience what
you had known by your observation before. And so I say that only when a
man puts himself where he can feel the power of the Christ, where it is
possible for him, if there be a Christ, if Christ be all that the
Christian religion claims that He is, only when a man puts himself where
he needs and must have and must certainly feel that Christ, if there be
a Christ, only then has he a right to disbelieve if the Christ be not
there, only then has he a