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 dealing with those things that belong to this earth, with the different duties and opportunities and pleasures that present themselves to him every day, and that higher and loftier region into which he has entered seems to have no capacity to call forth those powers which he has been using in this lower region. And then I think again there is upon the souls of men who deal with Christianity one great conviction which is very deep and strong. It is that the Christian religion cannot be absolutely that which it presents itself to human mankind as being, because it is so rich in the blessings that it offers, because it comes with such a large enjoyment to our human life, and opens such great opportunities for human living. Is it not because it seems to us too good to be true that we sometimes turn away from Christianity, and think that if we enter it at all we must enter it in the dark, that it cannot possibly appeal to these human natures and make them understand its truth, and let them take it into their intelligence that thence it may issue into the soul and become the guiding power of the life? Sometimes it seems as if Christianity were so high that it was impossible that man should attain to it, as if it were something altogether beyond our human powers. Do you want me, a creature with this human body and this human relationship, with this body and with these perpetual bindings and connections with my fellow-men, do you want me to mount up and live among the stars and hold communion with the God of all? And if you want me to, is there any possibility of my doing it? Such a life is glorious, but not for me. It goes beyond any capacity that I possess. Ask yourselves, my friends, if something like this which I have tried to describe is not very often in your minds as you hear the magnificent invitations which Christ gives to the human soul to live its fullest life, to man to be his fullest being. There are, no doubt, other reasons which present themselves to men, and of those I do not speak. I will not think that the men who are listening here to me now, in a base and low way shrink from the evidence of Christianity and from the life of Christ because they do not want to enter into that religion because it would make too great demands upon them in the sacrifices that they would be called upon to make. It is said sometimes, and I doubt not that it is sometimes true, that men will not see the power and truth of Christianity because 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 to the spirit of Christianity itself. Many and many a sceptical lecturer is denouncing that which Christian men would, with all their hearts, denounce; is declaring that to be untrue which no true Christian thinker really believes, that which is no real part of the great Christian faith, which is our glory. Do not think when I speak thus, when I say that there are things attached to Christianity which men do not believe, that they do not believe in the great truth of Jesus, without them, which men denouncing think that they are denouncing the religion which is saving the world. Do not think that I am simply paring away our great Christian faith, and making it mean just as little as possible in order that men may accept it into their lives. I am coming to the heart and soul of it. I want to know, if my life is all bound up with this religion of Jesus Christ, I want to know intrinsically what that religion is. I will scatter a thousand things which in the devout thought of men have fastened themselves to it. It is but clearing the ship for action, the making it ready that it may do its