Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death: 08. Christ a Fact

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death: 08. Christ a Fact



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 08. Christ a Fact

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Christ a Fact

But there's another step in the ladder. Put your foot up on the next rung. Christianity leads you straight to something else. And again it is something else greater than itself. It's a sharp scale ascending. The something else proves to be some One else. For Christianity doesn't stand by itself. It is not a thing nor a system in itself. It is merely a shoot out of a root.

As Christian civilization roots in Christianity, so Christianity roots in Christ. It comes out of Him. The two are intertwined beyond separation. And it is less than He. The shoot is less than the root. Cannon Liddon said a few generations ago, "Christianity is Christ." That is, the real thing of Christianity can be understood only as one gets to Christ. He is the standard of it. And so we have the third fact. Christ is a fact.

I am ignoring a whole lot of evidence here. There are large evidential reserves wholly untouched. I am talking for the man in the street, on the move, to be caught by plain talk if at all. Simply from this level, where all are compelled to confess what their eyes see, Christian civilization certifies the fact of Christianity. And the fact of Christianity certifies the fact of Christ.

And Christ stands here not simply for those thirty-three years of His personality. Christ stands for the potent influences that radiated, and that radiate, from that personality, and from those years with their tremendous happenings.

The name Christ stands for ideals, the highest known. It stands for ideals lived amid the stress of our common life; actually lived. It stands for love and sacrifice beyond what any other did show, or could show. It stands for power in overcoming the terrific moral inertia of life, the prejudice and superstition, the hatred of men, and of evil at its deadliest, and immensely more in completely overcoming the power of death itself, and living again a new triumphant life on earth past the grave line.

Yes, Christ stands for more yet, the power that can make that ideal a living reality in human life today. For what has been said of Christianity must be said of Christ. He is the power of Christianity. Christ is Christianity, the real thing. He is more than it. For all of its power comes out of Him. Christ is a fact, a tremendous, unmistakable, unalterable fact.

The evidence is plain and open to the man in the street. A glance at the date line in the morning paper, and at the post-mark of the last letter that came, tells of the fact of Christ. A touch with some one you know who lives the real thing, or, who has been blessedly changed in life, makes that fact take hold of your very heart.

But there's another egg in this nest. A little mothering will bring it to life. The fact of Christ is linked up with another fact, the Christ-Book. The Bible is a fact, tied and knotted up with the fact of Christ. The two are inextricably inter-woven. For Christ is the very heart-blood of this Book. Take Him out of it you cannot, simply cannot! You would have itself taken out of it.

It is striking that you must go to this Book to get the essential facts about Christ Himself. It is the one original source of information about Him. The very book that tells at first hand about the divine Christ must itself be divine. It is a lonely book, solitary, quite by itself in its standards, its ideals, and its power. It would take a Christ to make a Christ. And it would take a Christ to make this Christ Book.