I want to speak to you of the way in which my Master, Jesus Christ, appeals to the intelligence of man, of the way in which He comes to us in the noblest part of our nature, and claims us there for our true life within Himself.  I would feel altogether wrong if I let you depart, if I allowed you to meet here with me week after week and say these words which I am privileged to speak to you unless I did thus claim that the Christian life is the largest life of the human intellect, that in it the noblest and central powers of man shall attain to their true liberty.  It is given for us perhaps to ask ourselves for one moment why it is that man thinks, is ready to think, that he must give up the very noblest part of his life, his powers of thinking, in order that he may enter into Christianity.  It seems to me that there are certain reasons for it which we can see; but how fallacious those reasons are!  Is it not partly because man, when he is called upon to live Jesus’ life, when he is called upon to be a spiritual creature, immediately sees that he is entering into a new and different region from that in which his reason has always been exercised.  He has been dealing with those things that belong to this earth, with the different duties and opportunities and pleasures that present themselves to him every day, and that higher and loftier region into which he has entered seems to have no capacity to call forth those powers which he has been using in this lower region.  And then I think again there is upon the souls of men who deal with Christianity one great conviction which is very deep and strong.  It is that the Christian religion cannot be absolutely that which it presents itself to human mankind as being, because it is so rich in the blessings that it offers, because it comes with such a large enjoyment to our human life, and opens such great opportunities for human living.  Is it not because it seems to us too good to be true that we sometimes turn away from Christianity, and think that if we enter it at all we must enter it in the dark, that it cannot possibly appeal to these human natures and make them understand its truth, and let them take it into their intelligence that thence it may issue into the soul and become the guiding power of the life?  Sometimes it seems as if Christianity were so high that it was impossible that man should attain to it, as if it were something altogether beyond our human powers.  Do you want me, a creature with this human body and this human relationship, with this body and with these perpetual bindings and connections with my fellow-men, do you want me to mount up and live among the stars and hold communion with the God of all?  And if you want me to, is there any possibility of my doing it?  Such a life is glorious, but not for me.  It goes beyond any capacity that I possess.  Ask yourselves, my friends, if something like this which I have tried to describe is not very often in your minds as you hear the magnificent invitations which Christ gives