s by another. As a human
society, again, she avails herself freely of human opportunities and
aids, of earthly and created beauty, for the setting forth of her
message; yet she can survive, as can no human society, when she is
deprived of her human rights and her acquired wealth. As human she
numbers the great multitude of the world's sinners among her children,
yet as Divine she has produced the saints. As Divine she bases all her
gospel on a Revelation which can be apprehended only by Faith, yet as
human she employs the keenest and most profound intellects for its
analysis and its propagation. In these and in many other similar points
it has been attempted to show why she offers now one aspect and now
another to human criticism, and how it is that the very charges made
against her become, when viewed in the light of her double claim, actual
credentials and arguments on behalf of that claim. Finally, in the
meditations upon the _Seven Words_ of Christ, we considered very briefly
how, in the hours of the deepest humiliation of His Humanity, He
revealed again and again the characteristics of His Divinity.

It now remains to consider that point in which she most manifests that
double nature of hers and, simultaneously therefore, presents, as in a
kind of climax, her identity, under human terms, with Him Who, Himself
the Lord of Life, conquered death by submitting to it and, by His
Resurrection from the dead, showed Himself _the Son of God with power_.

I. Death, the world tells us, is the final end of all things, and is the
one universal law of which evasion is impossible; and this is true, not
of the individual only, but of society, of nations, of civilization, and
even, it would seem, ultimately of physical life itself. Every vital
energy therefore that we possess can be directed not to the abolition,
but only to the postponement of this final full close to which the most
ecstatic created harmony must come at last.

Our physicians cannot heal us, they can merely ward off death for a
little. Our statesmen cannot establish an eternal federation, they can
but help to hold a crumbling society together for a little longer. Our
civilization cannot really evolve an immortal superman, it can but
render ordinary humanity a little less mortal, temporarily and in
outward appearance. Death, then, in the world's opinion, is the duellist
who is bound to win. We may parry, evade, leap aside for a little; we
may even advance upon him