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.  That is the condition of a man who has built himself what seems to be a creed of faith, a trust in God in anticipation of the day when danger is to overtake him, and has said to himself, I am safe, for I will take refuge in it then.  But religion is the house in which we live, it is the table at which we sit, it is the fireside to which we draw near, the room that arches its graceful and familiar presence over us; it is the bed on which we lie and think of the past and anticipate the future and gather our refreshment.  There is no Christ except the present Christ for every man, unto whom all the power of the historic Christ is always appearing, and who is great with all the sweet solemnity that comes from the knowledge of what in the future He is to be to the world and to the soul.  I am anxious to-day to impress this upon you:  that the Christian faith is not a dogma, it is not primarily a law, but is a personal presence and an immediate life that is right here and now.  I am anxious to have you know that to be a Christian does not mean primarily to believe this or that.  It does not mean primarily, although it means necessarily afterward, to do this or that.  But it means to know the presence of a true personal Christ among us and to follow.  Here is the only true power by which a religion can become perpetual.  Men outgrow many dogmas which they hold.  The lines in which they try to live change their application to their lives.  But I know a person with a deep,