Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/349

Letter 29] may be little changed, but inwardly his spirit is dead within him. His religion—for it was a religion to him—is now dead; and sooner or later his changed influence must make itself felt in an infection of deadness spreading through the whole of the multitudes whom he once inspired.

It is for these reasons that I look to a simpler form of Christianity as the future religion of the masses; first because I see that the most active religious forces of the present day are already unconsciously following on the lines traced by Christ's spirit; and secondly, because these movements already exhibit a deficiency which the worship of Christ alone can fill up.

The worship of Christ as the type and King of men helps to solve the problems of the individual as well as those of the nation. As long as human nature is what it is, as long as friends and families are parted by death, as long as the mind is liable to be weighed down by depression, and the body to be racked by physical pain, so long will there be hours when we shall all look upward and demand some other consolation than the commonplace; "These misfortunes are common to all." Stripped of all myth and miracle, the life and death and triumph of Christ convey to the simplest heart the simplest answer that can be given to the irrepressible question, "Whence comes this misery?" From the cross of Christ there is sent back to each of us this answer, "We know not fully; but our Leader bore it, and good came of it in the end." And when we stand at the brink of the grave and ask, "What is death?" again the answer comes back from the same source, "We know not fully; but He passed through it and He still lives and reigns."

But besides the powerful influence of religion in the critical and exceptional moments of our lives, the influence of Christ would come full of strength and blessing to the working men of England even if they acknowledged Him,