CHRISTIANITY A VITAL FORCE. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.”—JOHN, vi., 63. Nor that which man can state is Christianity: that which men live under certain conditions of inspiration-that is Christianity. It is the living form which truth takes, not the form which truth takes in a merely speculative statement. Christianity is a living power. It has poetry in it, but Christianity is not a poem. It has the element of reasoning in it, yet Christianity is not a philosophy. If you should gather up all the truths in Christianity and give them appropriate statement, it would not become a system of theology, or, if it became a system of theology, it would no longer be Christianity. A system of philosophy which includes in it every thing which belongs to Christ and to a Christian life may and does have its uses, but, after all, it is not a living power; and Christ said that his religion was, that what he taught was not word-forms, which were just heard in the ear it was that which sprang up in the mind by the power of the Holy Ghost, in consequence of such teaching; it was a living thing in man, as it was a living thing in himself. In other words, there is a subtle life-power, and it is this life-power that is the true Christianity. What is a plant, though it be perfect in all points, in form and color, if it have not in it that mysterious principle which philosophers call the vital element ? It is then no longer a plant. The dried plants of a herbarium may be souvenirs, but they are not living plants; the life has gone out. And so also it is with this human body when the vital power ceases; when one has just died by accident, and not one element is lost of outward life or form. There is every organ; every member; every fibre; every drop of blood-and yet the body is not a man. What was it that made it a man? It was the life-force. It is not my arm, or my foot, or my head, or my blood, or all of them together, that makes me a man; it is something which is using all these things, and which we call the vital principle. It is that that makes the man; and all these other things together, without this vital force, amount to nothing, else a cunningly carved statue would be a man. Nature is not simply that vast round of things which we see. There is a life-force (or, as philosophers in our day are pleased to call it, "force," which is apparently the only God of philosophy), without which the whole framework is dead as a picture. Out of that life-force of which we constitute the living organism in the individual comes comprehensively the system of the world. It is precisely in analogy with this that Christianity is to the nature of man a divine force, spiritualizing him. It is not the doctrine which is employed, or the instrument; it is not the illustrations which are employed, or the reasonings which may be deduced, that give to Christianity its potency. It is that something else besides, over and above all these interior and these external elements. These are what Christ called the flesh, and he says that, in and of themselves, they profit nothing. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." This is Paul's meaning when he contrasts his method of teaching with that which prevailed among the Greeks. Theirs was external, his internal. Theirs was merely human influence. He recognized this internal agency in terms as well as in general statement. I did not depend, he says, upon wisdom, or upon polished exterior, or admirable adaptation of means to the end. He undertook to produce effects by no such methods as belonged to the ordinary schools of men. I determined to know nothing but Christ, and I determined not to know him except in this way-crucified-that you might be strong in all the power of God, in the power of the soul. There was an interior something that he was feeling after and expounding. In the next place, he declares the Gospel explicitly to be-what? a history of the life, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ? Nay! For although all these things are in the Gospel history, he declares that the essence of that Gospel was the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation. There is in the Gospel a divine meaning, acting through its teachings upon the human soul in such a way as to transform it from a lower to a higher sphere; and that process by which man is thus transformed and changed-that is Christianity. It is a vital force; and a vital force not abstractly considered, but operating upon the human soul. It may be stated, then, generally, that Christianity is a latent spiritual power, designed and adapted to translate man from a lower and physical life into a higher and spiritual life. That is Christianity. Let us, then, consider farther, First. If this be Christianity, what is a Christian life? Second. Some good reasons why men should enter upon such a life. What, then, in the first place, is a Christian life? It is the life of the human soul, derived not alone from natural lawsnot alone from the incitements of society-procured not by human causes, but distinctively and peculiarly a life which is derived from God. It is a life which results from the union of our mind with the divine mind. It is distinctively peculiar in this, that it is not an occasional excitement and orgasm; it is not the access, as the ancients believe, of a divine spirit once in a while, but it is the indwelling of the divine influence in the human soul in such a way as that man has an incitement and an inspiration higher than any that can come from natural and material causes. It begins in this fact (this is the vital fact-it is the key-note of the whole theme), that there is a divine power which lapses into the human soul, and |