But to the vivid and realizing faith of Christ’s followers He is still their living Head, their Intercessor, their Guide.  His resurrection is the warrant of their future life.  He has gone before and will come again to receive His own.  Christianity is Christ:  all believers are members of His mystic body:  the Church is His bride.  He is the Alpha and the Omega of the world’s history.  In the contemplation of His personality as the chief among ten thousand His people are changed into His image as from glory to glory.  The ground of salvation in Christianity is not in a church, nor a body of doctrines, not even in the teachings of the Master:  it is in Christ Himself as a humiliated sacrifice and a triumphant Saviour.

Second, the religion of the Bible differs from every other in its completeness and scope—­its adaptation to all the duties and experiences of life and to all races and all conditions of men.  It alone is able to meet all the deep and manifold wants of mankind.  Hardwick has very aptly pointed out a contrast in this respect between the faith of Abraham and that of the early Indo-Aryan chiefs as portrayed in the Rig Veda.  The pressing wants of humanity necessitate a faith that is of the nature of a heartfelt trust.  No other can be regarded as strictly religious.  Now Abraham’s faith was something more than a speculation or a creed.  It was an all-embracing confidence in God.  He had an abiding sense of His presence and he confided in Him as his constant guide, defender, and friend.  His family, his flocks, his relations to the hostile tribes who surrounded him, the promised possession of the land to which he journeyed—­all these were matters which he left in the hands of an unseen but ever-faithful friend.  His was a practical faith—­a real and complete venture, and it involved gratitude and loyalty and love.  Abraham’s childhood had been spent in the home of an idolatrous father; for Shemite as well as Aryan had departed from the worship of the true God.  In Chaldea, as in India, men had come to worship the sun and moon and the forces of nature.  But while the Hindu wandered ever farther away from Jehovah, Abraham restored the faith which his ancestors had lost.  He had no recourse to Indra or Varuna, he sought no help from devas or departed spirits.  He looked to God alone, for he had heard a voice saying, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be thou perfect."[220] Under the inspiration of such a summons Abraham became “the father of the faithful.”  He was the representative and exemplar of real and practical faith, not only to the Hebrew race but to all mankind.  He staked his all upon a promise which he regarded as divine and therefore sure.  He believed in the Lord and He counted it to him for righteousness.  He left home and country and ventured among hostile tribes in an assured confidence that he should gain a possession, though empty-handed, and a countless posterity, though yet childless, and that all this would be granted