We talk about Christ
the Saviour, and think about Calvary long ago. We talk about the Christ
the Judge, and think of a great white throne set in some mystic valley
of Jehoshaphat, where some day the world is to be judged. We do not so
get hold of Christ. The Christ who is in the past is not our Christ
unless His power holds forth, the power of His spirit, which is the
whole knowledge of the life in which we live. We think of the Christ of
the future, for whom all the world is waiting. He will never enter into
us and lead us unless we know that He is here and now. It does seem to
me sometimes that if men would only take religion as a real and present
thing, and if, instead of worshipping it in the past and expecting it
with fear and dread and vain hope in the future, it could be a real
thing with them here and now, something in which they are to live, not
to which they are to flee in moments of doubt, not of which they should
make rescue, but in which they should do all their work and live, then
religion would be to the soul of man so that it could not be cast aside,
so that they must enter into it and take it into themselves and make it
their own. Religion is not the simple fire-escape that you build, in
anticipation of a possible danger, upon the outside of your dwelling and
leave there until danger comes. You go to it some morning when a fire
breaks out in your house, and the poor old thing that you built up
there, and thought you could use some day, is so rusty and broken, and
the weather has so beaten upon it, and the sun so turned its hinges,
that it will not work.
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