Thus we are exhorted by New Theology to love Jesus supremely and obey him absolutely, regardless of our belief about the person and nature of Christ. These exhortations sound very plausible, and seem to make the new doctrine more spiritual and practical than the old-fashioned orthodox belief, which made so much of the nature and person of Christ. At the present day we hear such statements even from the pulpits which are called evangelical. And many people are deceived by the very plausibleness of this position, because they seem to be laying more stress upon the practical side of Christianity than upon the intellectual definition of the terms of the Christian doctrine. I was one of those who were deceived by this teaching, and was finally led away from the path of the truth. Let me show how such unsound teaching of the essentials of Christian doctrine as denying the deity of Christ will exert its baneful influence upon the mind of the believer, especially upon the mind of the newly converted Christian in a heathen land. Be sure that the belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is not one of the non-essentials of the Christian doctrine, as those New Theologians try to make us believe, but it is the very life and essence of Christianity. If you take away this belief from the Christian faith it will die. In the first place, to speak plainly, do you think that we can love Jesus Christ supremely if he is not God, but man? What is supreme love? Is it not a true, living, personal love? But if Jesus Christ was a mere man, born of Mary and Joseph, just as all other men were born, then he must have been dead for nineteen centuries. And if he is not risen from the dead, can we love supremely such a dead man? We sometimes say that we love such and such great men of history, such as Washington and Lincoln, but in this case we mean we love their memory, not the persons themselves. But we cannot love them as we love our fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands, who are really living among us now. We cannot have the warm, living, personal love for those historical personages that we have for those who are living right among us. What is that supreme love which true Christians cherish toward their Saviour? Is it a loving memory, or true personal, living love? To the true Christian is not Jesus the ever-living and ever-present personal Saviour? Do we not love him more than father or mother, wife or husband? Surely we love him as a person, and not as a beautiful character who once lived upon this earth, and who is pictured for us by his biographers.