The Newtown bee., 1896-01-24
A SERMON BY BISHOP BROOKS
1FROM THE CHURCHMAN OF MARCH 8,
 1890

When company of men change their scenery within few moments, as we have changed ours, and come into the midst of surroundings entirely different from those which were encompassing them a few moments back, it is good for them to take account of what difference the change has made in them, or what it means to them to have come into these conditions.
 Every man changes with his circum- stances he is so full of the susceptibility and of the readiness with which the human mind responds to the things with which it has to deal. And yet at the | same time every man carries within him. self such an identity, such continuous life, that he remains the same in spite of the circumstances by which he is sur rounded.
 It is little for us to come here, my friends, to spend our hours together, if we leave ourselves outside when we come in and leave the church inside when we go away. How we keep our religion apart from our life! How we do cur work upon the shore, and it seems to Us as if there were islands eff there in the strpam, and once in a while we get into our boats and pull away and cross the water, aud there do our worship, and think our better thoughts upon these islands in the stream, and then pull back again to the shore which is all secular. Sometimes we cast our eyes across the water and think 1t good that we should be there. But we dD not bind the two together. The two must come together. There is but one man. There is but one life for each of us, and no man gains the blessing of the sacred associations unless they come to be as the interpretation of all the life that he is living, and make known to him the man that he is, even when he seems to be most separated from the deepest things.
 I think, when man comes to realize that
 BEING A CHRISTIAN IS NOTHING ON EARTH
 EXCEPT BEING A MAN;
 that the Christian life is nothing in the
 world except the fulflment of the human
 life; that every Christian institution is
 but the setting forth, in type and pat
 tern, of that which, when the world shall
 come to it's completeness, shall be the en-
 tire life of all mankind ; then there comes a wonderful freshness aud reality into those thoughts which very often have be come so dim and dull in regard to it. l
 would submit to you all that. l would tell you that when man becomes 8 Christian he becomes man; that just so far as & man falls short of the Christian type and character, he falls short of his humanity; that being a Christian is not going aside from our human life, putting off into some strange region and there dwelling apart from all humanity. It is entering into the depths of our humanity and being thoroughly a man. My friend says to me on the street, What is it to be a Christian?' It is to be the fulfilled man. What is the Christian Church !? | It is the fulfilled human society.
 Man, when he enters upon the higher ! man. love this dear humanity in which we live, with all it's faults and failures, with all it's sins and sorrows. It is dear thing, from which nan would not be separated. As man loves the human life into which God has sent him-this special, personal human life.-so human ity loves it's humanness. And no religion shall ever lay-hold upon the human soul, that says to man-"You shall become something else than man; you shall be- come some strange, saintly, angelic being, different from manhood"; but only that which, touching the deepest desires of our human nature, says "Let ne do your work for you, and you shall be truly man." It seems to us at first that we must drag down our highest influences, that we must bring heaven down to earth, in order that the two may meet, Not so. We must bring human life up to heaven, and realize it's divine capacity.
 The great truth with regard to the Cos 1 pels is that
 JESUS IS FIRST OF ALL A REvEALER. Before He does one special work for man, before He lays His hand to the great burden of human sin, He first pours down His light and shows man what man is. His first deed to you, my friend, must be in giving you more lofty and celestial and divine thoughts of what you are. The Incarnation meaus that God fg, h11yx iFo ty. such gior.ous capabiliGy, that He could pour His own life in that human life and make the divine-human existence which we call the Christ. It was because of the infinite value that He saw in human life that Jesus died upon the cross. Thus at the two ends of Jesus Iife--in His h. eaFnation, in His entrance upon our ex- parience, and in His departure from our human experience, in His Cfuc xion, ! there is this splendid testimony to the ! gIoriousness of human life.
 Now, my friends, when in the face of all that I hear the talk that Is current among men to-day, when I read the cheap talk that is in papers and books. when l hear the cheap discourse that falls from mems lips; when l hear a young man daring to say that life is not worth living, that human life is not 2 glorious thing; when hear the insignifi- cant and sontemptible little cynic, who grows more and more common in our and fantastic civilization, and set him by the side of Jesus Christ it ia almost impossible to let one's pity overcome one's contempt. $ What does that young fellow know abou6 human life2 How has be gone aown to the depths of this nlarpel-