“There are some persons who believe that if we pass through the ceremony of baptism and sacrament, we shall be accepted by God, but if you accept baptism as an outward rite, you cannot thereby render your life acceptable to God, for Christ wants something internal, a complete conversion of the heart, a giving up the yoke of mammon and accepting the yoke of religion, and truth, and God. He wants us to baptize our hearts not with cold water, but with the fire of religious and spiritual enthusiasm; he calls upon us not to go through any outward rite, but to make baptism a ceremony of the heart, a spiritual enkindling of all our energies, of all our loftiest and most heavenly aspirations and activities. That is true baptism. So with regard to the doctrine of the sacrament. There are many who eat the bread and drink the wine at the sacramental table, and go through the ceremony in the most pious and fervent spirit; but, after all, what does the sacrament mean? If men simply adopt it as a tribute of respect and honor to Christ, shall he be satisfied? Shall they themselves be satisfied? Can we look upon them as Christians simply because they have gone through this rite regularly for twenty or fifty years of their lives? I think not. Christ demands of us absolute sanctification and purification of the heart. In this matter, also, I see Christ on one side, and Christian sects on the other. “What is that bread which Christ asked his disciples to eat? what that wine which he asked them to taste? Any man who has simple intelligence in him, would at once come to the conclusion that all this was metaphorical, and highly and eminently spiritual. Now, are you prepared to accept Christ simply as an outward Christ, an outward teacher, an external atonement and propitiation, or will you prove true to Christ by accepting his solemn injunctions in their spiritual importance and weight? He distinctly says, every follower of his must eat his flesh and drink his blood. If we eat, bread is converted into strength and health, and becomes the means of prolonging our life; so, spiritually, if we take truth into our heart, if we put Christ into the soul, we assimilate the spirit of Christ to our spiritual being, and then we find Christ incorporated into our existence and converted into spiritual strength, and health, and joy, and blessedness. Christ wants something that will amount to self-sacrifice, a casting away of the old man, and a new growth in the heart. I thus draw a line of demarcation between the visible and outward Christ, and the invisible and inward Christ, between bodily Christ and spiritual Christ, between the Christ of images and pictures, and the Christ that grows in the heart, between dead Christ and living Christ, between Christ that lived and that was, and Christ that does live and that is. . . . .