to you all unreasonable? Do you turn here in your pew or in your aisle
and say, "After all, it is the old story which I have tested and know to
be untrue."

Suppose yourself back there in Jerusalem. Suppose the self testimony
came to you from the very person of Jesus Christ. Suppose the words that
He absolutely said and the deeds that He absolutely did bore to you a
testimony that some greater than a human life was there, and that then,
as you pressed close to Him and became a part of His life, you found
your own life awakened and became a nobler man, ashamed to sin, aspiring
after holiness, thinking noble thoughts, lifting yourself not above the
earth, but lifting yourself with the whole great earth, which then is
taken up into the presence of God and made sacred through and through. I
know no man in whom I trust except by the personal evidence that he
bears to me of himself. I know no man's nature finally but by that
testimony which the nature gives me of him. Bring me all evidence that
the man is trustworthy, and then when I am convinced I will go and stand
in the presence of that man himself, and he shall tell me. So the world
stood, so the world stands to-day in the presence of Jesus Christ. His
presence on earth is an historic fact. The words that He spoke are
written down in a true record. The deeds that He did are the history of
the manifestations of His character, and the story of His christendom is
the continued manifestation of His life, the divine life in the life of
man, made divine through Him. Now, a question that comes in the
Christian's mind is "Why don't people believe this?" Why should they
not? Is it not written in the historical record? Has it not manifested
itself in the experience of mankind? If it has, surely then it appeals
to man's reason, and is not merely the act of the blind, stupid thing
which we call faith, but it is the noblest action of that hour in which
I believe, in the heavens above me and in the earth under my feet, in