I am convinced that these feelings are general among great multitudes of the more thoughtful and intelligent adherents of Christianity. Religion rests with them upon a certain intellectual acquiescence, or upon the equipoise of rational probabilities, or on the compromise of intellectual hesitations. Their tastes are gratified by the normal forms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred and stimulated. But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches of the ear, and the music of the Church is silent, and the seduction of splendid ceremonial is forgotten, there remains the uneasy sense that between all this and the actual Carpenter-Redeemer there is a wide gulf fixed; that Jesus scarcely lived and died to produce only such results as these; that there must be some other method of interpreting His life, much simpler, much truer, and much more satisfying. Is it wonderful that among such men the current forms of Christianity excite no enthusiasm, and that the bonds of their attachment to it are lax and easily dissolved? And what is felt by these men within the Church is felt with much greater strength by multitudes of sincere men outside the Church, who do not hesitate to express their feeling and to pronounce current Christianity a burlesque and tragic travesty upon the real religion of the Nazarene. But the moment we do begin to live, however inefficiently, as Jesus lived, the sublime reality of His religion is revealed to us. We do actually find that in the postponement of our own desires for the sake of others; in the abandonment of our own apparently legitimate ambitions for the service of the poor; in the patient endurance of affront and injury; in the forgiveness of those whose wrong seems inexpiable; in the daily exercise of love that "seeketh not itself to please," but hopeth all things, and believeth all things,--there is a joy beyond joy, and an exceeding great reward. We do actually find that to forgive our brother freely is better both for him and us than to judge him harshly, and the wisdom of Jesus is thus justified in its moral and social efficacy. We do actually find that in ceasing to live by worldly maxims and by living instead according to the maxims of Jesus, we have attained a form of happiness so incredibly sweet and pure that the world holds nothing that resembles it, and nothing that we would exchange for it. For this is now our great reward, that peace attends our footsteps, and that our hearts are no longer vexed with the perturbations of vanity and self-love, of envy and revenge. We find human nature answering to our touch even as it answered to the touch of Jesus, and revealing to us all its best and purest treasure. We find the very natures we thought intractable and destitute of all affinity with ours, brought near our own; the very men and women we thought wholly alien to us suddenly made lovable, and full of qualities that claim our love.