presence in the life which we are living, which we may be
living, that there should be no question in any man of the power that is
open before him to enter into the higher life and to fulfil his soul to
God. What I want to do, in the few moments which I may speak to you this
morning, is--laying aside all the theological conceptions regarding
Him, laying aside everything that attaches to the complications and
mysteries in which His nature has been involved in men's dreams of Him,
laying aside everything which the churches are holding as the special
doctrine of their especial creed--to go back to the very beginning and
see if we can understand anything of what it is--this personal Christ,
who lives here in the world and manifests the power of God and opens the
possibility of every man. Surely it is good that we should know
something about Him of whom we speak so much, that there should be some
clear and directest conception of one whose name has been upon the lips
of men for eighteen hundred years; and it is possible for us, in the
simplest way, to understand how His power has come into the world and to
see where it is possible that it should come and enrich our lives and
make us different men. We go back, then, to the very beginning of the
aspiration after God, which is in the heart of man everywhere. There has
never been a race that has been without it. There has never been a
generation that has not reached forward and thought there was a higher
life, a fuller liberty, to which it could come. It has been in all the
religions which have been not simply fears, but which have been the
highest utterances of all the different races in all the different
generations of mankind and all the different countries of the world; and
there was one especial race in one especial part of the world in whom
that aspiration was especially strong. We will not ask how it came to be
there. There it was in this strange people living on the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean Sea, and in all its history marked out by the
strange peculiarity that it was a spiritual people, that in the midst of
all its sins, blunders, and weaknesses it was forever lifting up its
soul to God and striving to find Him out. Very often it blundered
strangely and sadly. Very often it failed to get that for which it was
seeking, by the very impetuousness, rashness, and earnestness of search.
But it was always seeking after Him. And the years rolled by, and by and
by in the