are called upon to believe, into which they are invited to enter, really
is. The lecturer goes up and down the land and in the face of mighty
audiences he denounces Christianity. He declares it to be unintelligible
and absurd, to be monstrous and brutal. And when you ask what it is that
he is thus denouncing, what it is that he is thus convicting over and
over again, you find that it is something not simply which makes no part
of Christianity, but which is absolutely hostile to the spirit of
Christianity itself. Many and many a sceptical lecturer is denouncing
that which Christian men would, with all their hearts, denounce; is
declaring that to be untrue which no true Christian thinker really
believes, that which is no real part of the great Christian faith, which
is our glory. Do not think when I speak thus, when I say that there are
things attached to Christianity which men do not believe, that they do
not believe in the great truth of Jesus, without them, which men
denouncing think that they are denouncing the religion which is saving
the world. Do not think that I am simply paring away our great Christian
faith, and making it mean just as little as possible in order that men
may accept it into their lives. I am coming to the heart and soul of it.
I want to know, if my life is all bound up with this religion of Jesus
Christ, I want to know intrinsically what that religion is. I will
scatter a thousand things which in the devout thought of men have
fastened themselves to it. It is but clearing the ship for action, the
making it ready that it may do its work, the binding everything tight
just before the storm comes on, for that is just the moment when nothing
essential to the ship itself must be cast away, when I make sure, if I
can, that every plank and timber, that every iron and brass is in its
true place and ready for the strain that may be put upon it.

But what, then, is the Christian religion? It is the simple following of
the divine person, Jesus Christ, who, entering into our humanity, has