ring the four
years of his college life he had passed through various stages of
unbelief along with a good many of his fellow-students. With them he had
made out a sort of philosophy of life which he supposed he believed. It
was founded partly upon what he _wanted_ to believe and partly upon what
he could _not_ believe, because he had never been able to reason it out.
Up to this time even his experience with the Presence had not touched
this philosophy of his which he had constructed like a fancy scaffolding
inside of which he expected to fashion his life. The Presence and his
partial surrender to its influence had been a matter of the heart, and
until now it had not occurred to him that his allegiance to the Christ
was incompatible with his former philosophy. The doctrine of the
resurrection suddenly stood before him as something that must be
accepted along with the Christ, or the Christ was not the Christ! Christ
_was_ the resurrection if He was at all! Christ _had_ to be that, _had_
to have conquered death, or He would not have been the Christ; He would
not have been God humanized for the understanding of men unless He could
do God-like things. He was not God if He could not conquer death. He
would not be a man's Christ if He could not come to man in his darkest
hour and conquer his greatest enemy; put Himself up against death and
come out victorious!

A great fact had been revealed to Courtland: There was a resurrection of
the dead, and Christ was the hope of that resurrection! It was as if he
had just met Christ face to face and heard Him say so; had it all
explained to him fully and satisfactorily. He doubted if he could tell
the professor in the Biblical Literature class how, because perhaps _he_
hadn't seen the Christ that way; but others understood! That white,
strained face of the girl was not hopeless. There was the light of a
great hope in her eyes; they could see afar off over the loneliness of
the years that were to be, up to the time when she should meet the
little brother again, glorified, perfected, stainless!

It suddenly came to Courtland to think how Stephen Marshall would look
with that glorified body. The last glimpse he had had of him standing
above the burning pit of the theater with the halo of flames about his
head had given him a vision. A great gladness came up within him that
some day he would surely see Stephen Marshall again, grasp his hand,
make him know how he repented his own negative