in the alterability of the world of human relations.  Christians believe in the superiority of moral over material forces, in the wisdom and might of love.  A life like Christ’s is pronounced in every generation unpractical, until under His inspiration some follower lives it; and slowly, as in His own case, its success is acclaimed.  His principles, as applied to an economic institution such as slavery, or to the treatment of the criminal, are counted visionary, until, constrained by His Spirit, men put them into practice, and their results gradually speak for themselves.  His followers in every age have seemed fools to many, if not to most, of their judicious contemporaries; but cheered by His confidence, they venture on apparently hopeless undertakings, and find that He has overcome the world.

Jesus’ victory over sin works in true disciples a similar conquest.  Christians label any unchristlikeness sin, and they vastly darken the world with a new sense of its evil, and are themselves most painfully aware of their own sinfulness.  Jesus’ conscience has creative power, and reproduces its sensitiveness in theirs; they are born into a life of new sympathies and obligations and penitences.  By His faith, and supremely by His cross, He communicates to His followers the assurance of God’s forgiveness which reestablishes their intercourse with Him, and releases His life in them; and Jesus lays them under a new and more potent compulsion to live no longer unto themselves, but unto their brethren.

Jesus’ conquest of death is to His followers the vindication of His faith in God, and God’s attestation of Him; and with such a God Lord of heaven and earth, death has neither sting nor victory; it cannot separate from God’s love; and it is itemized among a Christian’s assets.  The face of death has been transfigured.  Aristides, explaining the Christian faith about the year 125 A.D., writes, “And if any righteous man among them passes from the world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort his body as if he were setting out from one place to another near.”  Christians speak of their dead as “in Christ”—­under His all-sufficient control.

Communion with Jesus in God. When the Christian through Jesus finds himself in fellowship with His God and Father, he does not leave Jesus behind as One whose work is done.  He discovers that he can maintain this fellowship only as he constantly places himself in such contact with the historic Figure that God can through Him renew the experience.  It is by going back to Jesus that we go up to the Father; or rather, it is through the abiding memory of Jesus in the world that God reaches down and lifts us to Himself.  And at such times no Christian thinks of Jesus as a memory, but as a living Friend.  To Him he addresses himself directly in prayer and praise, which would be meaningless were there no present communication between Jesus and His disciples.