to him.  Do I want to believe anything that cannot be proved to be true, anything that my intelligence shall not receive?  Why should I believe it?  Shall I trust myself to the ship merely because I have refused to examine its timbers, when men tell me that it is unsound?  Shall I throw away my truthfulness simply for the sake of holding what I want, what I choose to call the truth?  It is not because it is safe, it is not because it is pleasant, it is because it seems to the Christian man to be true, that the Christian man believes in the presence, the life, the power of Jesus Christ.  Therefore come, let me hear every one of you what you have to say.  Let me see where that upon which my soul rests for its very life breaks down; but, until I hear, I will go forward, strong in the assurance of that which takes hold of all my life, convinces my reason, lays hold of my affections, enlarges my actions, and opens my whole being to the freedom of the child of God.

And why should not you, my friends, why should not you?  I honor the sceptic, the faithful and devout sceptic, with all my soul.  I am no scorner of the man who, without scorn, finds it impossible to accept that which to my soul seems to be the absolute truth.  I will scorn only that which God scorns.  He scorns the scorner, and only the scorning man is worthy of the scorn of human kind.  But while I honor the sceptic, while I invite him to make manifest his scepticism, not merely for his sake but for my own, I will not hold, I cannot hold that he is living a larger life than the man whom the Christ invites to every noble duty, to every faithful fulfilment of himself.  I will feel that he, perhaps by the necessity of his nature, perhaps by his circumstances, perhaps by something which came down to him from his ancestors, is shut in, is a contained and hampered and hindered man, and I will long for the day when he, lifting up his eyes, sees that Christ walking in the midst of humanity, and yet at the head of humanity, manifesting our human nature, but outgoing our human nature, glorifying our streets while He interprets our streets for the first time into their full meaning, giving to our shops and houses a radiancy which they have expected and dreamed of, but never felt, and tempting us always into a deeper belief in Him, which, embodying itself in a completer consecration to the right and true, shall lead us on into the fulness which he fills.  Can I, can you, have Christ in human history, Christ in the world, and live as if He were not here?  Will you not give yourself to that of Him which you know to-day?  Will you not at least lay hold of the very skirts of His garment and say, “I see that Thou art good, I see that Thou art true.  Lead me into the goodness and truth which by communion and sympathy shall know Thee more.  Lord, I believe.  I believe just a little.  Lord, I know that that must come which Thou hast said has come in Thee.  I would enter into Thee, to see whether it has indeed come in Thee, and Thou shalt