It would not enter into my design toward the hearers which Providence, having gathered together before me, seems to have specially predestined to hear the words of eternal life from my unworthy lips--it would not, I say, enter into my design to show them these dark spiritual perspectives, without pointing out at the same time some vista of supernatural light, some promise and way of salvation, some hopes of life, nay, even life itself. No! God forbid that I should become as the treacherous guide who draws the lost wayfarer to the very edge of the precipice, and there leaves him to himself and to the terrors of the ravenous depths below. Yet, mark it well!--the mystery of life leads towards death, through paths that skirt a giddy abyss where no man’s self-possession is proof against danger; but there is, nevertheless, an infallible road that leads to life through and in spite of the manacles of death. It is called by a name with which my lips cannot become familiar, as with a common word indifferently bandied about in careless conversation--a name which I confess myself unable even to pronounce without feeling my whole being tremble with love and bow down in worship; a name which, when spoken from this pulpit for the first time, only a few days ago, produced an impression, or rather a mysterious shock, that neither you nor I have yet forgotten--the name of _Jesus Christ_. It is of him I come to speak to you to-day. My Father! my Friend! my Master! abide with me, and, in order that I may be worthy to speak of thee, speak thou thyself through these my lips! Among all questions put by man to his own intellect, whether they be historical, scientific, philosophical, social, or religious, there is none of more gigantic importance than this: Who and what is Jesus Christ? He and his works have been for two thousand years the most notable reality of the universe; they have been inextricably mingled with the course of history, with the family and state relations of man to man, with literature, with poetry, with politics; they have been the unseen link that binds together all social problems; they have been the mainspring of those mysteries that are convulsing the present century, and which are fraught to some minds with terror and threatenings, while to others they suggest hope and salvation. They have been, without the slightest exaggeration, all things to all men, and it follows, therefore, that according to the bent of man’s judgment on Jesus Christ and his works, so will man’s whole nature lean, his intellect with his thoughts, his heart with its feelings, his life with its acts and its shortcomings, his soul with its eternal aspirations.