You have another charge against Christianity. You say it is after all a selfish faith, in which, however beautiful and noble the moral teaching may be, the ultimate appeal has always been to the hope of reward and fear of punishment. You will tell me that in ninety-nine of our churches out of a hundred I shall hear this doctrine, and shall find it in ninety-nine out of every hundred of theological or religious works.

If it be so I am sorry for it. But I am speaking of Christ’s Gospel, and I say that you will not find the doctrine you protest against there. I cannot go through our Lord’s teaching and his disciples’ to prove this. I ask you to read for yourselves, bringing honest and clear heads to the study, and not heads full of what you have thought, or this and the other man has preached or written, and I say that then you will give up this charge.

But as I have tried to do in all other cases, so here, I will tell you exactly what my own faith on this matter is.

Christ has told me that the only reward I shall ever get will be “life eternal,” and that life eternal is to[235] know God and Him. That is all the reward I care about. The only punishment I can ever bring on myself will be, to banish myself from his presence and the presence of all who know him, to dwell apart from him and my brethren, shut up in myself. That is the only punishment I dread.

But this reward he has given us already, here. He has given us to know God, and knowing God involves entering his kingdom, and dwelling in it. That kingdom Christ has opened to you, and to me, here. We, you and I may enter in any hour we please. If we don’t enter in now, and here, I can’t see how we are ever likely to enter in in another world. Why should not we enter in? It is worth trying. There are no conditions. It is given for the asking.

I think you will find it all you are in search of and are longing for. Above all, you will find in it and nowhere else, rest, peace—“not a peace which depends upon compacts and bargains among men, but which belongs to the very nature and character and being of God. Not a peace which is produced by the stifli............