And when he came and lived a mortal life what did he show the divine nature to be? It may all be told in one word:--LOVE. Love, unconquered, unconquerable by human sin and waywardness. Love, sympathetic with the inevitable sorrows of human existence. Love, expressed in every form by which a God could express love. His touch was healing; the very hem of his garment had restoring virtue. He lived and loved as we live and love, only on a higher ideal,--he gave to every human affection a more complete interpretation, a more perfect fullness. And finally, as the highest revelation of Love, he died for us, and in anguish and blood and dying pains still loved, still prayed for us, the ungrateful race of man. He passed through the night of death that he might learn not to fear it, and came forth radiant and immortal to tell us that we shall never die. By a refinement of infinite mercy, the law of our lives is written not in hard statutes but in the life of this tender and sympathetic friend. Christ is our law. We learn courage, patience, fortitude, forgiving love from him. The lesson impossible in statute is made easy by sympathy. But lest the very brightness of the ideal fill us with despair we have his promise, "Lo, _I_ am with you alway to the end of the world! I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you." Jesus, as an inseparable soul-friend--a consoler, a teacher, an enlightener--dwells on earth now in a higher sense than when he walked the hills of Palestine. "Forever more beside us on our way, The unseen Christ doth move, That we may lean upon his arm and say, 'Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?'" To that great multitude whom no man can number, who are living the hidden life of faith, these studies into the life of our Master are dedicated. They have been arranged in the order of the seasons of the Christian year, with the hope of aiding the efforts of those who wish at these sacred seasons to bring our Lord more clearly to mind. We hear much of modern skepticism. There is, perhaps, no more in the world now than there has always been, only its forms are changed. Its answer lies not in argument, but in the lives of Christ's followers. It was Christians who lived like Christ that won the first battle for Christianity, and it must be Christians who live like Christ that shall win the last. The life of faith in the Son of God, when fully lived out, always has been and always will be a victorious argument.