have committed unto him against that day.”1 -"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Annul that gospel of victory over death by One who has taken away the sting of sin, and what remains? A certain fearful looking-for of judgment; a vision of futurity with no reasonable hope of escape from evil and its consequences; a prospect of dying without getting rid of the disease which kills us.

Read again the words of the Apostles after you have blotted out their gospel of the conquest of death by Christ. "Through death he was destroyed by him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and brought no deliverance to them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.' 'God hath not raised him up, neither were the pains of death loosed, because it was not possible that he should escape from it.' 'The enemy that shall never be destroyed is death.' "This same Jesus shall never come again.' 'He liveth not to make intercession for his people.' 'Even as he never was offered to bear

12 Tim. 1: 12.

1 Cor. 15:55-57.

the sin of many, so shall he never again appear without sin unto salvation to them that wait for him.' 'If we believe not that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep with Jesus will God never bring with him.'

"Christ is not risen!

Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved;

Of all the creatures under heaven's high cope, We are most hopeless, who once had most hope, And most beliefless, that had most believed.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,

As of the unjust, also of the just;

Yea, of that Just One too,

It is the one sad Gospel that is true,-
Christ is not risen!"

To take Christ out of the Bible is to make it worse than useless to a sinful world. It is to make it crushing, disheartening, terrifying,— the saddest book that was ever written. The Old Testament casts upon us an unbroken shadow of gloomy fate. The New Testament pierces it with an intolerable light of conscious guilt and coming judgment.

But restore Christ to his place in the Bible, and it becomes the book of hope and joy. The unbroken shadow is changed into the adumbration of the coming Redeemer. The intoler

able light is transformed into a healing radiance: the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.

IV

CHRIST'S MISSION TO THE INNER

THE

LIFE

IE ultimate mission of Christ was to the inner life of man. His ministry there was not in words alone, but in character and action; in what he was and what he did for men; the heart of his message was himself, his life, his death. The central gospel of this message is the reality and completeness of peace with God through the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins brings with it the freedom and power of a new inner life of divine righteous

ness.

These four statements may serve to mark out, in a broad way, the line of thought that I wish to follow in this chapter.

I

THE KINGDOM IS WITHIN YOU

Christ came into the world to proclaim and establish the kingdom of God among men. The sway of that kingdom extends over every region of our life. But its seat must be within us.

It must reach and reconcile and rule that interior region of the heart which lies behind audible utterance and visible action, below social ties and bonds of human fellowship, underneath conscious reasonings and formulated theories, that undiscovered country where the moral sentiments, the religious feeling, the sense of dependence, and the joy or grief of living, have their home.

It is there that the real forces of human life are generated. Man could not "live by bread alone," even if he would. Every phase of his existence betrays the presence of an energy, whether for good or for evil, which is drawn from some secret source deep within him.

Vitality, in man, is a spiritual force conditioned, but not created, by a material embodiment. A vitometer will never be invented, because there is no instrument delicate enough to take the temperature of the inner life. Even in dealing with bodily disease, the wise physician, while he may make his diagnosis absolute, always recognizes an element of uncertainty in his prognosis. "While there is life there is hope," he says. He might add, "While there is hope there is life." Hope has healed more diseases than any medicine.

The life of man is a demonstrated daily mira