n they plunged into baseness and made their soul
like a dog's soul? They shudder at the thought of that because they
think it would come again. Nay, nay, shudder if you will at the thought
of that, but believe that the highest you ever have been you may be all
the time, and vastly higher still if only the power of the Christ can
occupy you and fill your life all the time.

I said that there were many things that people attached to Christianity
that did not belong to Christianity. I know there are. It is impossible
that a great system like the system of Christ, a great person like the
great person of Christ, should be in the world, and men not have
speculated and thought in regard to Him. Those are not Christianity. I
want to-day, if I may do nothing else, to tell you absolutely how simple
and single the Christian faith, the Christ, really is. It is not the
inspiration of this book or any theory in regard to its inspiration. It
is not the election of certain souls and the perdition of other souls.
It is not the length of man's punishment, whether it is going to be
forever and ever, or whether man is to go to his restoration. It is not
even the constitution of the divine life, the great truth of the way in
which God lives within His own nature. None of these are the essence of
the Christian faith, but simply this: The testimony of the divine in man
to the divine in man that lifts the man up and says: "For me to be
brutal is unmanly; to be divine is to be my only true self." Why do I
believe in God? If some man asked me, when on the street, I think I
should have an answer to give him. I could give one great reason--two
great reasons which are really but one great reason--why I believe in
God. I believe in God, my friends, I believe in God with all my soul,
because this world is inexplicable without Him and explicable with Him,
and because Jesus Christ believed in Him; and it was Jesus Christ that
showed me that this world demanded God and was inexplicable without Him;
that made certain every suspicion and dream that I had had before, and
Jesus Christ believed in Him. Shall I go to the expert about chemistry
or geology and ask him the truth with regard to the structure of the
world and the meeting of its atoms and forces? And shall not I go to the
spiritual expert, to him in whom the spiritual life of man has been
clearest, and say, "O Christ, tell me what is the centre and source and
end of all?" When he says, "God," shall