the result of a study of the teachings of Christ, and of the conditions in which men live.

Let us consider certain facts. These facts all rest on the accepted truthfulness of the Christian Scriptures. Nothing is to be questioned. Only undoubted facts are considered. The first of these is:

Christianity is a life. It is not a philosophy. A man becomes a Christian by being born from above. A man is a Platonist who accepts the philosophy of Plato, and a Kantean who accepts the philosophy of Kant, and a Calvinist who accepts the philosophy of Calvin; but a man may believe all the teachings of Jesus and be a devil. Not belief, but life, makes a man a Christian. Jesus gave no system of philosophy. His scattered teachings are no more like theology than a vase of lilies and roses is like a text-book on botany, or than the stars are like a book on astronomy. He who has Christ's life is a Christian, whatever his name. "Whosoever loveth is born of God." He who has not Christ's life is not a Christian, whatever he believes. How is this life communicated? By voluntary choice of Jesus Christ as Master and Lord, by the substitution of his life for our life. He who thus opens himself to Christ receives the very life of God. That, I think, is a fair statement of the faith of Christendom. But now certain searching questions arise.

How can we get life by connecting ourselves

with One who has been dead and out of sight for nearly two thousand years? How can we, in any but the most abstract and figurative way, come into relation with him? 66 But," some one says, "we are inspired by the words he spoke; we touch his thoughts." Yes, but his words in themselves are no more than any other words. Apart from himself his characteristic teachings have no remarkable mearing. Any carpenter could say, "If you confess your sins, you will be forgiven;" but what would it amount to? Jesus is believed, not because of what he taught, but because of what he was. And I am asked to take the word of a dead leader? No, there must be something deeper and more vital than that for my faith to rest upon. "But Jesus is not dead; he has risen, and lives in heaven with God." I do not see that that helps matters much. If our faith must bridge an abyss either of time or space, if there is no present personal relation with some one who is as truly alive and as near as ever, I, for one, must give up the whole scheme. Those who lived when Jesus lived may have believed in him because of his mighty works. But we did not live then, and he has died, and thus submitted to the same law to which we are subject; and if death ended his ministry, there is no reason for thinking more highly of him than of others. He cannot give life. Moreover, if he is in some remote heaven, you and I cannot go to him; he might transform

me if he were on the earth, but he is absent. If he has left us, that ends the matter.

Thus we are brought to the fact that the work which Jesus began must be carried on by some one who can get as near to the thought and will of man as Jesus did, or the growth of his kingdom will end in a dream. Soldiers will never long follow a dead leader. His memory may be revered, and may inspire for awhile, but the only man who can lead the generations is one always present and always alive.

There is apparently no person on the earth who can speak with the authority of Christ. Romanists claim that prerogative for the Church; and the Pope, as the head of the Church, to be the vicegerent of Christ. If I were preaching to Romanists, it might be well to argue that point; but as I am addressing those who do not believe it, I will let it pass, only remarking that there is nothing of the teaching of Christ extant on which to base that claim. It rests, not on Scripture, but on tradition.

And now I come to something about which I ask careful attention. It has been thought best by some to ignore or cover up facts because it was feared that they would weaken faith. But an unsettling will be the greatest of blessings to those whose faith can be weakened by fuller knowledge. There is a great gulf between refusal to think and intelligent faith.

Can the Bible take the place of Jesus Christ

in the world? No: there is no reason to think he ever thought it would. Life cannot come from a book; life can come only from life. Christ never once referred to the composition of the New Testament. It is a book. It is composed of the same words as any other book. To learn what those words mean we must study uninspired grammars and lexicons and become acquainted with languages which have been dead for hundreds of years. There has not, so far as known, been a single manuscript of the original writings of the Bible preserved. There is no copy of any book of the Bible extant which was made less than three hundred years after Christ. Some of the books are not complete even in copies as the Gospel of Mark. The authors of many of the books are unknown-as the Epistle to the Hebrews. The copies possessed have not been kept free from errors in transcribing, or from interpolation-as, for instance, the passage in John's First Epistle about the "three that bear record in heaven," which is eliminated in the Revised Version. Some of the earlier copies differ widely from the later ones. The question of what books should be in the New Testament was never settled by our Lord, nor with his authority, so far as we know. For three hundred years after his time there was not unanimity among his followers on this subject. No General Council of the Church ever passed upon the question of the canon. Individual Christians

are dependent on translations. We read the English Bible, the Germans the German Bible, and so on through the languages of the world. Missionaries translate the Bible as soon as they can, and they do right; but what endless corrections they would make if they knew Hebrew and Greek, Chinese and Hindustanee, better! All the consecrated scholarship of missionaries has not yet made a translation of the Bible into Chinese which will not be materially changed within a few years! I speak of Goethe, and you say, "O, it is impossible to translate his finest passages. There is in them a fragrance too evanescent for translation." If that is true of Goethe, how much more true of David and of Job! Of the teachings of Jesus not one of us ever read one word in the language in which it was spoken. He spoke in Aramaic; what they remembered of that which he spoke in Aramaic, his disciples, years after his death, wrote down in Greek or Hebrew, and we read still another translation in English. If we were to get the very manuscript which Matthew wrote, we should find all the words which Jesus spoke to be translations of recollections of those words. Consider these facts, and then remember how we dispute about words, how great quarrels grow up because we do not use words alike. If we had no other faith but that in the Bible, which we gladly accept as the Word of God, would our religion rest on an immovable foundation? Have words