Foreign Missions or World Wide Evangelism 83 complete course of their development and in the manifold intensity of each separate human faculty, “This being so, I contend that the faith in Christ, born, crucified, risen, ascended, forms the basis of this perfect re ligion; that it is able, in virtue of its essential character, to bring peace in view of the problems of life under every variety of circumstance and character—to illuminate, to de velop, and to inspire every human faculty. My contention rests upon the recognition of two marks by which Christianity is distinguished from every other religion. I t is absolute and it is historical. “On the one side, Christianity is not confined by any limits of place, or time, or faculty, or object. It reaches to the whole sum of being and to the whole of each separate existence. On the other side, it offers its revelation in facts which are an actual part of human experience, so that the peculiar teaching which it brings as to the nature and relations of God and man and the world is simply the interpretation of events in the life of men and in the life of One who was truly Man. I t is not a theory, a splendid guess, but a proclamation of facts. “These, I repeat, are its original, its unalterable claims. Christianity is absolute. I t claims, as it was set forth by the apostles, though the grandeur of the claim was soon obscured, to reach all men, all time, all creation; it claims to effect the perfection no less than the redemption of, finite being; it claims to bring a perfect unity of humanity without destroy ing the personality of any one man; it claims to deal with all that is external as well as with all that is internal, with matter as well as with spirit, with the physical universe as well as with the moral universe; it claims to realize a re-creation co extensive with creation; it claims to present Him who was the Maker of the world, as the Heir of all things; it claims to complete the cycle of existence, and show how all things come from God and go to God.” -
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