Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their ground. They pretend to nothing that they are not.

The Resurrection miracle is nothing to you and me if it is only an event of eighteen centuries bygone. Unless we can live the immortal life - unless we can receive God to his own home in these hearts of ours - the texts are nothing to us unless these daily lives illustrate them.

How indifferent are men to this carpenter or that fisherman, who has no word to speak of adventure or of wealth, but has only the word of God to proclaim, and has no credentials but that he comes in the name of the Lord.

It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.

You may take this as a general and central principle in criticism: that all science, literature or song, which recognizes conscious life as the ruling principle of the universe, is Christian.

You need the living, loving heart of living, loving men and women to quicken other hearts, which can live too and love too, and, in their turn, will quicken others which are dying now.

Let a man live with God, not afraid to talk with him. Let him study God's plans and methods, as one of Michelangelo's pupils might study his.

Thrones, dominations, principalities know now with a terrible certainty that mere force of arms has no power which compares with that living word of the crucified Nazarene, that bears with it Eternal Life, and directs the duty of a world of men whom he can lead, but who bend no knee to power.

Wrong fails because it is wrong. The wrongs, the untruths, are inconsistent with each other. They clash against each other and confute each other. They neutralize each other and are lost.

Do well what you do. And do it conscious that you ought to be leaders among men.