simple, whether it be true or not? My friends, you may believe
it or you may disbelieve it, but the Christian faith is clear and simple
enough surely in this statement, stripped of a thousand difficulties,
perplexities, and bewilderments. That is it, that there is in the world
to-day the same Christ who was in the world eighteen hundred and more
years ago, and that men may go to Him and receive His life and the
inspiration of His presence and the guidance of His wisdom just exactly
as they did then. If you and I had been in Jerusalem in those old days,
what would we have done, if we were more than mere creatures of others,
more than men merely absorbed in our business, if there were any
stirring in our souls after the deeper and diviner desires, could we,
would we have been satisfied until we had gone wherever He might be,--in
the temple, in the courts, or on the country road,--and found that
Jesus, and entered into some sympathy with His life, that He might give
to us what revelation of life and what guidance of will it might be
possible should come from Him to men who trusted Him, until we had
entered into sympathy with Him and the fascinations of His character?
That is the Christian life, my friends, the thing we make so vague and
mysterious and difficult. That is the Christian life, the following of
Jesus Christ.

What is the Christian? Everywhere the man who, so far as he comprehends
Jesus Christ, so far as he can get any knowledge of Him, is His servant,
the man who makes Christ a teacher of his intelligence and the guide of
his soul, the man who obeys Christ as far as he has been able to
understand Him. What, you say, the man who imperfectly understands
Christ, who don't know anything about His divinity, who denies the great
doctrines of the Church in regard to Him, is he a Christian? Certainly
he is, my friends. There is no other test than this, the following of
Jesus Christ. So far as any soul deeply consecrated to Him, and wanting
the influence that it feels that He has to give, follows Christ, enters
into His obedience and His company, and receives His blessings, just so
far He is able to bestow it. I cannot sympathize with any feeling that
desires to make the name of Christian a narrower name. I would spread it
just as wide as it can be possibly made to spread. I would know any man
as a Christian, rejoice to know any man as a Christian, whom Jesus would
recognize as a Christian, and Jesus Christ, I am sure,