branches, nor about what He tells them of the love that 'lays down
its life for its friends.' But when He comes into the region of
chronology, they are all agog to know the 'when' about which He is so
enigmatically speaking.

Now is not that exactly like us, and does not the Christianity of
this day very much want the hint to pay most attention to the
greatest truths, and let the little difficulties fall into their
subordinate place? The central truths of Christianity are the
incarnation and atonement of Jesus Christ. And yet outside questions,
altogether subordinate and, in comparison with this, unimportant, are
filling the attention and the thoughts of people at present to such
an extent that there is great danger of the central truth of all
being either passed by, or the reception of it being suspended on the
clearing up of smaller questions.

The truth that Christ is the Son of God, who has died for our
salvation, is the heart of the Gospel. And why should we make our
faith in that, and our living by it, contingent on the clearing up of
certain external and secondary questions; chronological, historical,
critical, philological, scientific, and the like? And why should men
be so occupied in jangling about the latter as that the towering
supremacy, the absolute independence, of the former should be lost
sight of? What would you think of a man in a fire who, when they
brought the fire-escape to him, said, 'I decline to trust myself to
it, until you first of all explain to me the principles of its
construction; and, secondly, tell me all about who made it; and,
thirdly, inform me where all the materials of which it is made came
from?' But that is very much what a number of people are doing to-day
in reference to 'the Gospel of our salvation,' when they demand that