, the
grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood by a man, one
all-powerful to help and who never forsakes, and every one of your
hearers who is not dead to truth will catch the life, 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 all 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 possible for every
one of us.

And our Lord and Master is the connecting link between 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
Christianity; man, through Christ, flooded and permeated and
interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit of God. And thus Paul is dead
and yet alive, but fully possessed and dominated by the spirit of
Christ. Alive as never before, and yet his every thought, word, and
deed is really that of his great leader. Can you talk of self-denial
to such a Christian? He had forgotten that such a man as Saul of
Tarsus or Paul ever existed; he lives only in his Master's work, and
is transfigured by it. This, and nothing less, is Christianity, and
this is the very highest and grandest heroism. Paul conquers Europe
single-handed, alone he stands before Caesar's tribunal, and yet he
is never alone; and from the gloom of the Mammertine dungeon he
sends back a shout of triumph. And Peter walks steadily, cheerfully,
and unflinchingly, in the footsteps of his Master to share his
cross.

Let us, before leaving this topic, notice carefully just what
religion, and especially Christianity, is not.

1. It is not merely opinion or intellectual belief in a creed. This
may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion. "Thou
believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also
believe and tremble." We speak with pride, sometimes, of our
puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with
its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning,
its happy firesides, and its noble charities. A