Part 13

"What is there here to reflect the power and might of Christianity, such as the early Church, especially, possessed, and subsequent generations, in times of great faith, really knew so much of--the power to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to achieve wonders out of Christ's poverty, to experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abiding Divine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering of the world? How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets to the suffering world which are able to transmute the people's want into God's plenty, and attract and hold the hearts of men with the joys of the Vision Splendid? Why is it that hope has given way to resignation, that the preaching of forgiveness has been dwarfed by the insistence upon penalty, that distinct evils in the physical sphere are attributed to God and, because of that, held up to religious estimation as good; the day of miracles is regarded as belonging to a far distant past, the answering of prayer looked upon as the exception instead of the rule, and the old melody of joy in religion exchanged for the wail of despair in an interpretation of 'Thy will be done' that is only associated with human calamity? The reply is as simple as, to the thoughtful person, it is obvious: we have lost knowledge of a living, vital, conquering faith that is rooted in God Himself, and have satisfied the hunger of human sense by placing trust in the things of the earth which we see and touch, and in so doing lost the power spiritually to achieve.

"Now we can only approach, in the hope of a day of better things, the great practical and intellectual problems of our times from the standpoint of faith's recovery, for it is only in their relationship to faith they can be viewed intelligently by the Christian. And it will be found that at the root of all our difficulties and all our negligences--so many of them unconscious--and as the cause of our vain expediencies and attempts to justify the corporate spiritual situation, is the absence of vital faith and a whole obedience to which God alone has conditioned results. We need sorely to reconsider what faith really is, and when we have recovered in some measure that knowledge of it in experience, which declared its unspeakable worth in the early Church and in later periods of ecclesiastical history which stand out before all others, we shall look back upon our past distrust of God and His promises with shame and wonderment, and proceed to revise our cataloguing of spiritual values and degrees of sin. For the really destructive thing, before all others, is a weakened faith that compromises in a half obedience to Christ and a search for earthly props. The work of Satan has even been the prompting of distrust of God in the human family, just as the work of redemption means so largely the re-establishing of it in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the first temptation of man to the present moment, all the forces of evil have concentrated upon breaking man's trust in God and His promises; every sin has had that as its ultimate end, and every disaster, ill and trial, in the world and individual life, is subtly presented by the enemy of God and man (knowing our haziness of vision), so as to place the appearances against the Creator in a blind disregard for the created; just as in the life of the Incarnate Son all the great power of the forces of darkness were brought to bear unsuccessfully upon the snapping of His faith in His Father--from the time He was tempted to believe Himself forgotten, when hungering and physically reduced in the wilderness after His long fast, until the dreadful cry of dereliction from the Cross at the very end.

"The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things left undone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers that alone lastingly can achieve for God and hasten man's salvation. And this requires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdraws from compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and attitude of God, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedly accept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of the Divine promises for the utter destruction of the world's ills by a strict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for the accomplishment of results. Above all, this means a change and reform in corporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost total disregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in the Sermon on the Mount."

These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say they are not true? The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline of civilization, is ultimately to be traced back to organized religion, not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects in Christianity. Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail, because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, and finally compromised with worldliness and materialism. With each one of these false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the mass of people until at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased to have either the power or the will to force the organism to conform to the spirit. If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, then the time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring of divine grace that will bring recovery.

There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this. I have already spoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these mean much even though they may at present take on something of the quality of mechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of God working in him. The "World Conference on Faith and Order," the just effected federation of the Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists in Canada, above all the eirenic manifesto of the Bishops at the last Lambeth Conference, all indicate a new spirit working potently in the souls of men. Concrete results are not as yet conspicuous, but the spirit is there and a beginning has been made. Even more significant is the wide testimony to the need for definite, concrete and pervasive religion that is daily given by men whose names have hitherto been quite dissociated from matters of this kind; scientists, educators, men of business and men of public life. It may be testimony in favour of some new invention, some synthetic product of curious and abnormal ingredients; as a matter of fact it frequently is, and we confront such remarkable products as Mr. Wells has given us, for example. The significant thing, however, is the fact of the desire and the avowal; if we have this I think we may leave it to God to see that the desire is satisfied in the end by heavenly food and not by the nostrums of ingenuity. For the same reason we may look without dismay on certain novel phenomena of the moment. In their divergence from "the Faith once delivered to the Saints" and left in the keeping of the Church Christ founded as a living and eternal organism through which His Spirit would work forever, they are wrong and therefore they cannot endure, but each testifies to the passionate desire in man for religion as a reality, and no one of them comes into existence except as the result of desperate action by men to recover something that had been taken from them and that their souls needed, and would have at any cost. Each one of these strange manifestations is a reaction from some old error that had become established belief or custom. No one who holds to historic Christianity is interested in them, but those who have found religion intellectualized beyond endurance and transformed either by materialism or rationalism, seek for the mysticism they know to be a reality (to employ a paradox) in the ultra mysticism of Oriental cults; those who revolt against the exaggeration of evil and its exaltation to eminence that rivals that of God Himself, which is the legacy of one powerful movement in the Reformation, rush to the other extreme and deny the existence of evil and even the reality of matter, while spiritism, the most insidious, perilous and fatal of all the spiritual temptations that beset the world at this time, gains as its adherents those who have been deprived of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints and have been forbidden to pray for the dead or to ask for their prayers and intercessions.

However strange and erroneous the actual manifestation, there is no question as to the reality and prevalence of the desire for the recovery of spiritual power through the channels of religion. It shows itself, as it should, first of all in the individual, and it is only recently that organized religion, Catholic or Protestant, has begun to show a sympathetic consciousness and to take the first hesitant steps towards meeting the demand. Because of this the seekers for reality have been left unshepherded and have wandered off into strange wildernesses. The call is now to the churches, to organized religion, and if the call is heeded our troubles are well on the road to an end. If the old way of jealousy, hatred and fear is maintained, then humanly speaking, our case is hopeless. If the older way of brotherhood, charity and loving-kindness is followed the future is secure in the Great Peace. Nothing is wrong that leads men to Christ, and this is true from the Salvation Army at one end of the scale to the Seven Sacraments of Catholicity at the other. The world demands now not denial but affirmation, not protest and division but the ringing "Credo" of Catholic unity.

VIII

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.

We have tried to approach each subject in this course of lectures in the spirit of peace, and the greatest contributory factor in the achieving of the Great Peace is the individual himself, on whom, humanly speaking, rests the final responsibility. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Not by majestical engines and curious devices and mass-action, nor yet by an imposed human authority enforced by arms and the law, but by the Holy Spirit of God working through the individual soul and compelling the individual will. Peace is one of the promised fruits of the Holy Spirit, and like the others is manifested through human lives; therefore on us rests the preëminent responsibility of showing forth in ourselves, first of all, those things we desire for others and for society.

We have experienced the Great War, we endure its aftermath, and amidst the perils and dangers that follow both there is none greater than that which attaches to exterior war, viz., that the attention of both combatants is focussed on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimes of the opponent, with the result that both become destructive critics rather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * rather he identifies himself with the ideal." Seeing evil in others and flattering one's self is the antithesis of the spirit that would lead to the Great Peace, for in that spirit the field of warfare is transferred from the external to the internal, and the interior contest, which alone establishes lasting results, necessitates a recognition of our own error and the need of amendment of our own life.

If our modern devices have failed; if the things we invented with a high heart and high hope, in government, industry, society, education, philosophy have in the end brought disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, it is less because of their inherent defects than because the individual failed, and himself ceased to act as the sufficient channel for the divine power which alone energizes our weak little engines and which acts through the individual alone. There is no better demonstration of this essential part played by the personal life of man than the fact that God, for the redemption of the world, took on human form and became one Man amongst many men. There is no better demonstration of the fact that it is through the personal lives of individuals that the Great Peace is to be achieved, both directly and indirectly, than the fact that peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was promised to the individual man, by Christ Himself, as the legacy he left to his disciples after His Resurrection and Ascension. Since then the world has been under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the "Guide and Comforter" that was promised, even though it has blindly and from time to time rejected the guidance and therefore known not the comfort. The Old Law of "Thou shalt not" was followed by the New Law of "Thou shalt," and this in turn by the law of the third Person of the Trinity which does not supersede the dispensations of the Father and of the Son, but fulfills them in that it affords the spiritual power, if we will, to abide by the inhibitions and to carry out the commands.

Our search is for peace, the Great Peace, "the Peace of God which passeth all understanding," and we shall achieve this for ourselves and for the world only through ourselves as individuals, and so for the society of which we are a part, and in so far as we bring ourselves into contact with the Spirit of God. There is deep significance in the fact that the first time Christ used the salutation "Peace be unto you," was after His resurrection. It would seem that this special gift of the Holy Spirit had to be withheld from man until after the human life of God the Son had been brought to an end in accomplishment, for He says "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart I will send Him unto you. When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

It is the spirit that quickeneth. After God had revealed the Law and given to us the great redeeming and atoning Life, He saw that we had need of a further manifestation before we should be able to keep the law and live the life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was sent to quicken us and give us power to do what we had both heard and seen. Today we accept the moral law, we recognize the perfection of Chirst's life, but we need to be reminded again that the power to be "sons of God" is present with us if we will but use it. As this power is a spirit it can only be apprehended spiritually; when our minds and hearts are set on material things, even on good material things, the "still small voice" of the spirit remains unheard: but if we listen first to that inward voice and then use the means of grace afforded us, we are enabled to lift up our hearts and minds to the Creator and then to use in His service all the material universe which is also His creation. We can not get a right philosophy by working for right philosophy, but only by living in the right relationship as individuals: then as a by-product of religion a right philosophy will come. We can not get a right industrial system by searching for a right industrial system, but if we show forth in our lives the Christian virtues, a right industrial system will come as one of the by-products of religion. So with each one of our so-called "problems." Life rightly lived has no problems. This is a hard saying for an intellectual age whose temptation is to trust in its own power rather than in the power of God, but "except ye become as little children" and walk by faith and not by sight the Kingdom of God is withheld. A soldier who suffered in the late war, and out of his suffering found peace, says, "Christ's hardest work is to teach the wise: Those who are entrusted with authority and responsibility will be the least prepared to make the venture of the Spirit, however much they may believe in it. They are sacrificing least now: they will have to sacrifice most when the Spirit comes. They have so much to unlearn: children and working men have so little. The whole of our world today is rooted and grounded in intellect. Our machinery, our institutions, our great systems, the entire body of enterprise is governed by brains. It is this that will alter. Just behind intellect there is a vision that is purer, keener, more powerful than the vision of your eyes, than the hearing of your ears, than the touch of your hands. This world is being transformed into another which comes into being at our spiritual touch. The world needs something personal, something from the heart. It is sick to death with the cold machinery of the intellect. But before men see this they must change their view of life, they must be born again. The scientists, the historians and theologians, the philosophers, have made the universe too big. It is not a big place: it is very tiny. Life is so simple, really. Our wise men have made it so difficult, so ugly. It is only children who can see the risen Christ; children, perhaps, out of whom seven devils have been cast. The world needs not critics, but teachers, and children are waiting everywhere to teach, but men, shutting the windows of their souls, try rather to mould these little ones to fit into the vacant spaces of their own stupid world. Are not children the true artists? They won't tolerate anything but Beauty. They see Beauty everywhere, not because it is there, but because they want it there. Everything they touch turns into something far more precious than gold: every word they utter is a song of praise. You are almost in heaven every time you look into the eyes of a child." Remember, please, these are the words of a man who has faced the horrible realities of modern warfare, and so do not dismiss them as mere poetry, or with Nicodemus' question, "How can a man be born again?", but listen to a modern interpretation of the answer to that question:--("The Life Indeed.") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, must be born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to his little audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair of legislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but the kingdom of heaven is within you. Why a second birth? This is a second birth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements can work together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from the unseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it is the birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into the open air of liberty and light and life." Note the element of free choice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts are unconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as little children, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our persevering cooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves and for the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which the Spirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the Episcopal Church says, "This is the creed of the Church--the Divine Father and Forgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit and Abundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation of moral rectitude and spiritual character as the end and purpose of religion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating to human life--social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church still preaches the gospel of the Grace of God, the obligation and blessing of worship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments." Also "My brethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with our own age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see within its questionings, unrest and discontent--aye, its recklessness and apparent failures--the strivings of the Spirit of God. But each man has to voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritual order and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practice the worship of God, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,' or as St. Jude says, 'building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.'"

Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our own time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God," waiting our perception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faced death and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow." The first evidence of good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils and the desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that so widespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or group but is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope. Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; that governments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of open hostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await the action of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds love and forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate. Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not so immediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in this material sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extent experience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously and freely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all that hate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to love our enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evil powerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but only through the grace of God. When we try God's way, not waiting for the other person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or to forgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; then and only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we really praying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals, the way of distrust, and, thank God, we are none of us satisfied with the results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of God by making the great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith in himself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear that has issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way, that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowship that has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, of society that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit of faith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible of solution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. The modern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealing with men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-bound cults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour," both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has no real or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thought operating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions. As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personality are, so to speak, "in commission," a man does not hesitate to do those things he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point--if we need one, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence--is the pending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in Great Britain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty of maintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual would be, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is another instance of the same kind.

In a personal letter from a consulting engineer who has had unusual opportunities, by reason of his official position, to come closely in contact with the conditions governing industry and finance both in America and Europe since the war, I find this illuminating statement of a matured judgment. "As a practical matter, and facing the issue, I would preach the practice of de-centralization in government and business which will in time develop the individual and accomplish the desired end. * * * Decentralization should be carried to such an extent that the units of business would be of such size that the head could again have a personal relation with each individual associated with him. * * * With the personal relation again established, unionism as at present practiced would again be unnecessary, and the unions would become once more guilds for the development and advancement of the individual." It is this nullification of the human element, of the person as such, the introduction of the gross aggregate with its artificial corporate quality, and the attempt to establish a correspondence between these unnatural things, the whole being intensified by the emotions of fear, distrust and hate, which produces the contemporary insistence on "rights" and the rank injustice, cruelty and disorder that follow the blind contest. To quote again from the soldier who achieved illumination through the recent war, "My friends, there is no protection of rights in heaven. When we speak of rights we are blinded by the light of this world of rule and order and intellectual conceits. It is not justice we need, it is mercy."

If we honestly endeavour to bring about something more nearly approaching the Kingdom of God on earth, we should do well to achieve a little more of the quality of child-like trust which knows that through the petition to father or mother, or to a guardian angel, or directly to God, the result will surely follow. We long passionately to see a good, our good as we see it, accepted here and now, but whatever we offer, no mater how righteous or how salutary, is but a small part of the great good, a limited and partial showing forth of only one element, while the final and comprehensive good is the result of many contributions, and in the end is not ours, but God's, and by His overruling providence it may look very unlike what we had predetermined and anticipated. Moreover, the condition even of our own small good becoming effective, is faith, and neither sight nor action. There is a faith that can move mountains, and it is faith in fellowship, in the underlying, indestructible good in man, above all in the desire and the intent of God to deal mercifully with us and beyond the dictates of justice and the claims of our own deserts. When we know and accept this power of faith, placing it above the efficiency of our own feeble works, then indeed we may become the patient, hopeful, joyful and faithful Christians we were intended to be, and therefore the creators of the spirit of peace. Nothing permanent can be achieved except in coöperation with God; any work of man alone (or of the devil) has in it the seed of decay and must perish, This knowledge relieves us of the gloomy responsibility of destroying or trying to destroy every evil thing we see or think we see. If it is really evil it is already dying unless nourished by evil within ourselves. Here is a Buddhist legend which has a lesson for each of us--"The watcher in the shrine of Buddha rushed in to the Holy Fathers one morning with tidings of a horrible demon who had usurped the throne of our Lord Buddha. The Fathers ran to the throne room, each one more infuriated than the other, and declaimed against the insolence of the demon, who grew huger and more hideous at every angry word that hurtled through the air. At last arrived the oldest and most saintly of the monks and threw himself on his knees before the demon and said, "We thank thee, O Master, for teaching us how much anger and wrath and jealousy was still hidden in our hearts." At every word he said, the demon grew smaller and smaller and at last vanished. He was am Anger-Eating Demon, and anger-rousing words and even thoughts of ill-feeling nourished him.

The belief that in comparison with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lord of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time in the interest of "good business," "practical considerations" or "sound policy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results," acceptance of the horrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" something to another, from a patent medicine or "gilt edged" bonds to a new philosophy or an old religion; the estimating of values by size, number, cost. It is common parlance among Christian people to speak of what a man "is worth" meaning how much money he has. We speak of a man's "making a living" meaning only how much money he makes, when by making only money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the call of a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as a call to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of any piece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either great numbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need for leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack exist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first duty is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God (not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These are small matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows," and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters. Every life is made up largely of small things, "the little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which some one has called "the noblest portion of a good man's life."

With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of the spirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore of secondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of the Christian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those of which we need to be reminded today. We have already spoken of that child-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the common things of daily life--Christ's life of ministry, of good works (which was, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity and preaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those who were with him to "tell no man"; therefore the good works which are done "in His likeness" must not be done in public. If we are "seen of men," verily we have our reward. Christ's life ended in apparent failure, in ignominious death on the cross. The world worships today's success and immediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, must accept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret: "And my Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." A touching poem of Francis Thompson's pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards in Paradise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved. The man asks of God:

O when did I give Thee drink erewhile, Or when embrace Thine unseen feet? What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ's smile, Who am a guest here most unmeet?

and is answered

When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet (Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine) I felt the embraces on My feet. (Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine.)

A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which is love, begins at home, and that we love and serve God best in His holy human relationships--if we love not our brother whom we have seen how can we love God whom we have not seen?

Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original, suffer for others. When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing we are but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly and voluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we are transcending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, the Christian virtue. No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of the sacrifice of the millions of young lives who "stormed Heaven" in their willingness to die that others might live, can doubt this. The essence of love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice. Before our Blessed Lord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship, falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified, to suffer the ignominious death of a felon. He was made a spectacle for the jests and laughter of the multitude. In our own time and amongst ourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity for physical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is as great as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physical suffering. Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simple ways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moral courage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at under the guise of "jokes." Let us exercise charity by not quoting instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse pagan pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition of the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again who points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like which he calls the "sad virtues" were superseded, when the great Christian revelation came, by the "gay and exuberant virtues," the virtues of grace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, "the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be. Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all." If you say this is a paradox I reply: it must be so, since it requires faith to accept a paradox. The realm of reason is the one in which we walk by sight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to be reminded. If Christ be not the Son of God, and His revelation of the "faith once delivered" be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling, completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religion and moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is no explaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy. But if, by the gift of grace, we have faith, we remember "I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight."

Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personal God, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we must use the great dynamic of prayer. "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." We are told that one of the requisites of the really good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talker is in reality a monologuist. In our prayer-life today do we recognize sufficiently the need for listening to God? We are perhaps ready enough to ask for blessings and mercies, but that is only a part of the full life of prayer which must include also thanksgiving, lifting of the heart and mind, and quiet listening or interior prayer. There was an age in the world when this interior prayer was so much more joyful and natural a thing than the world of matter that it had to be taught "to labour is to pray." Today, when we accept the necessity of labour, and even worship activity for its own sake, do we not need to be reminded that to pray is to labour? If you doubt this, try to make that concentrated form of prayer known as meditation, out of which springs a resolve and determination to do better; try to do this faithfully for fifteen minutes a day and it may prove the hardest work you have ever undertaken. A great servant of God has said, "I believe no soul can be lost which faithfully practices meditation for fifteen minutes a day." Nor must we forget that in this work of prayer we are companioned by the Holy Spirit, the Peace-maker, Who maketh intercession for us "with groanings which can not be uttered" and "Who leads us ever gently but surely into that closer communion with God whose result is life more abundant." After prayer it is easier to realize that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace"; it is easier to obey the injunction "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." And for those that seek after peace it must be all wrath, all anger and all evil speaking which are put away: This leaves no room for what the world calls "just wrath" "righteous anger," or speaking evil of evil doers. Let us call to mind the incident in the early life of St. John, afterwards the great disciple of love, when he wanted to call down wrath on the wicked inhabitants of a city and was rebuked by Our Lord who said, "Ye know not in what spirit ye speak." After love had supplanted wrath, and the good spirit had taken the place of the evil in St. John's heart, he was sent to convert the people he would have destroyed. Yes, it is the spirit that matters, the wrath that is wrong and that must be put away before we can love God or our neighbour as ourself, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

When we understand that the object of life and of education is the creation of a spirit and not the doing of things, we are freed from the tyranny of results in this world as a final test and come to realize that judgment belongs only to God Who as a Spirit judges the effort.

Of course this does not mean that we are freed from the moral law, that certain evil things in ourselves and in others are not always the results of an evil spirit, but rather that in addition to avoiding and shunning those things which are obviously evil, we must with equal care avoid doing even good things in a bad spirit. The commandments still stand, the moral law is abated not one jot, but in Christianity and in Christianity alone are we given power to fulfill the law and to add the new commandment, the summing up of them all, of love to God and man. No human soul comes into the world without some desire to be good, because each human soul is a child of God. To each one, not blinded by pride (and surely it should be easy in these days to be humble) comes, sooner or later, the realization of his own inability of himself to do what he would, the need for a power outside himself, the power which is available and of which we have heard "I am come that ye might have life and more abundantly." Let us examine how the apostles set about living this abundant life. In Dr. Genung's "The Life Indeed" we read, "One and all they made it a matter of the spirit that is the man, but the spirit they recognized was not an abstraction, or a theory, but a present Person and helper who was witnessing with their spirits. St. John makes the matter equally definite: 'The Son of God,' he says, 'was manifest that he might destroy the works of the Devil,' and St. Paul, mindful of the inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan has changed his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light. I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions of spiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason the rebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so prone to invade the hearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go about controlling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringing the large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as it were, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse of simple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continue straight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life so deep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but that they are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win the world is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual life eternal, but just life without modification or limitation, life absolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'I am the Life,' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it.' St. John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, we may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly incorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the most inner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing it to terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight, and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheep the voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture."

Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplying the power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish the needful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not be likened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience and force of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace, on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised to find no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine in themselves, but who, when connected with the great central Source of Power, the Blessed Trinity in its three glorious manifestations, can show forth the light of the world. Christians should be torch bearers, and the true torch bearer lights not his own path so much as the path of those who come after him. And this brings us to the fundamental reason for personal responsibility. Our motive in seeking personal righteousness it not, as might hastily be thought, because of a selfish desire to save our own souls, or to withdraw either here or hereafter from other souls, but for "their sakes" to sanctify ourselves; for the lives we live today create the spiritual atmosphere of tomorrow.