We must insist on the historical character of our religion. As Christian conduct draws all its power from a supernatural religious experience which in its turn is based upon a supernatural creed, so this creed must be summary of supernatural facts. It is not, as many hold, a matter of indifference whether these are facts. On the contrary, this is what is of supreme importance. “If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.” This would seem to be self-evident. It is only as we have been raised with Christ by “the power of his resurrection” that we can share his life; and it is only as we share his life that we can know it and realize it. But how can we share his life and know and realize it, if he himself is lying dead in a Syrian grave? That cannot be shared which does not exist.

“The Present Crisis in Ethics” by William Brenton Greene, Jr. in The Princeton Theological Review (January, 1919), 17.