to Him. He came to be in mankind the deep, flowing stream of a new life. One regrets to find in some churches to-day in the repetition of the Apostles' Creed the omission of the sentence: "He descended into hell." There is no word in the Creed which expresses more fully the uttermost reach of the purpose of our Lord and the scope and boundlessness of His love. Down even into hell He went in the utterance of His love for mankind. How much this means! But to say no more, it means this, that deep into the dark of our human life He came, that there, below all sight, below all thought, He might release the vital streams that have been flowing from the fountain of Calvary ever since, and which have no other fountain.
We know what would happen in our bodies, to put it simply, if some great artery that fed our life were tied. Atrophy and palsy would creep at once over our unnourished frames. Precisely the same thing is true in the deeper life of our souls, if the arteries, those channels through which Christ would pour His energy and strength and power, are tied. To put the same thing still more simply: Suppose the Mississippi River instead of running into the Gulf ran out of the Gulf deep into the land. Suppose all of the rivers poured into the land instead of into the seas. As a matter of fact, that is in one sense what they do. We have got long past
