His power over mankind, that is incredible.  Therefore the men were right when they believed Jesus’ own word and looked to Him for the divinity which He said was present with Him upon the earth.  Then His life went on, and by and by fulfilled itself in the one great action in which He declared those two things which He longed to know, the life and newness of God and the power of their human nature.  He gave His life for them, indeed, in the awful suffering that preceded and that culminated upon the cross.  He gave His life in crucifixion for them, and in that crucifixion opened the divinest doors of His life, when opening a sanctuary of sorrow; and He bade them enter in and know there the absolute life of God and the great capacity of human nature to sacrifice itself for God.  And before He died, and afterward, He again appeared to them.  He spoke great words which said that this was not the end of things, that after they had ceased to see Him and touch Him and hear His voice He still was to be present in the world.  He said that the mysterious presence of those who had passed away, which all had known, was to culminate and be fulfilled in Him.  “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”  Wherever you “are together in my name, there am I.”  Words and words and words again like those He spoke, in which He declared that He was to be an everlasting presence among mankind, and therefore that which had taken place in the life of those disciples might forever take place; that that which Jesus had done in the days when He was present upon the earth should be continually repeated, in that He was forever to do that which He had been doing, giving Himself to human kind for their inspiration, for their elevation, for their correction, for their reproof, as He had been doing, their salvation, as He had been doing in those days in which He was here among them.  Men have believed that simply.  They have recognized that word of Christ, and found the fulfilment of it in their own lives; and that has been the Christian religion,—­just exactly what it was in the old days when Jesus was present in Jerusalem and Galilee.  Just exactly what men did then men have been doing in all the generations that have come since.  Just exactly what was possible then is possible for them now—­that we may become the followers of that same Christ and the receivers through Him of the divine life, by which alone the human life is perfected and fulfilled.

That is the Christian religion.  That is the Christian faith.  Is it not clear and simple, whether it be true or not?  My friends, you may believe it or you may disbelieve it, but the Christian faith is clear and simple enough surely in this statement, stripped of a thousand difficulties, perplexities, and bewilderments.  That is it, that there is in the world to-day the same Christ who was in the world eighteen hundred and more years ago, and that men may go to Him and receive His life and the inspiration of His presence and the guidance of His wisdom just