252 TSE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



losophy and theology, and of the highest, most exact, 

 science ; you may chain men by your logic, thrill 

 them by your rhetoric, and move them to tears by 

 your eloquence, and they will go home as dead and 

 cold as they came. "What they need is power, life. 

 But preach " Christ and him crucified " — not merely 

 dead two thousand years ago — but risen and alive 

 for evermore, and with'us to the end of the world, the 

 grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood 

 by a man, one all-powerful to help and who never for- 

 sakes, and every one of your hearers who is not dead 

 to truth will catch the Hfe, and go home alive and 

 not alone. 



So long as we preach a dead Christ we shall have a 

 dead church, as hopeless as the apostles were before 

 the resurrection. " But now is Christ risen from the 

 dead," " alive for evermore." See how Paul and Peter 

 and John, and doubtless aU the others, talked with 

 him and he with them, after he was taken from them, 

 and you have found the secret of their power, and of 

 that of all the great Christian heroes and martyrs who 

 could truly say. Lord Jesus, we understand each 

 other. Better yet, prove by experience that it is pos- 

 sible for every one of us. 



And our Lord and Master is the connecting link be- 

 tween God and man, through whom God's own Holy 

 Spirit is poured like a mighty flood into the hearts and 

 lives of men, transfiguring them and filling them with 

 the divine power. This is the biblical idea of Chris- 

 tianity ; man, through Christ, flooded and permeated 

 and interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit of God. And 

 thus Paul is dead and yet alive, but fiilly possessed 

 and dominated by the spirit of Christ. Alive as never 



