But in another sense it is the greatest peril of our age. For it has been seized by the spirit of scepticism and transformed into an ally of doubt. It has been used as an argument against the possibility of discovering a moral order in such a "hungry, ill-conditioned world" as this. Man's inhumanity to man has been employed to prove God's indifference or injustice to man. The feeling of sorrow and perplexity has been aggravated by wild and whirling words into a passion of resentment against the present conditions of life. Rash and sweeping schemes for their total destruction have been proclaimed as a new gospel. Christianity has been first claimed as a supporter of these schemes, and then denounced and repudiated as the chief obstacle to their success. The cry goes up that the whole world is out of joint. "Everything is wrong and crooked and unfair: the race of man has been deceived and maltreated and oppressed by the creation of such an order of life as the present. If God created it, so much the worse for God. But it is almost certain that he did not create it, almost certain that there is no God. The world of inequality is man's mistake. There is but one thing to do, and that is to break it all up, at once and utterly, and begin anew. Create a new world

if possible. If not, then let the old wreck sink and be blotted out, for it is worse, infinitely worse, than the blank desolation of an unconscious chaos."

This cry of anger and despair rings to-day in the ears of all earnest and thoughtful men and women. We are filled with perturbation and distress and deep anxiety to know the right and to do it, to understand the meaning of this exceeding great and bitter cry, and the duty to which it calls us. Is it indeed the utterance of true equity and wisdom? Is it the voice of a new Adam, appearing after so many ages of delusion, with open eyes to condemn the old world, and with ruthless hand to break it in pieces? Must we welcome him and hearken to him and believe in him, as the true judge and regenerator and leader of mankind?

The very form of the question points the way to the only Master who can answer it. Hawthorne's picture of the second Adam was a poetic dream. But the Apostle Paul uses the same figure to reveal a historic truth. "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the

second man is of heaven." 1 The new Adam has already come upon the earth, eighteen centuries ago. He was called Jesus. With pure and perfect heart he entered into the world, not desolate and depopulate, but thronged with the myriads of toiling, suffering men. With clear eyes he looked upon their different conditions, their manifold inequalities, their outward and inward joys and sorrows. steadfast heart he set himself to the divine task of beginning a new humanity and inaugurating the kingdom of heaven on earth.

With

He did not strive nor cry, neither was his voice heard in the streets.2 He did not protest against the moral government of the universe, because one man was rich and another poor, one strong and another weak, one happy and another wretched, one good and another evil. He did not say that God must be unjust because he has given, in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, much to one and little to another. He did not teach his followers that the only way to help the world was to rebel against this order, and refuse to submit to it, and denounce it, and fight against it. He did not even proclaim a social and political revolution. He was one of the most peaceful, orderly,

11 Cor. 15:45-47.

St. Matt. 12:19.

obedient, loyal citizens of all that subject land of Palestine; rendering unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, discharging every duty of his lowly lot with cheerful fidelity, and labouring patiently for his daily bread.

He was not blind, nor dull of heart to feel the troubles of life. The problem of inequality lay wide open before him. But it did not agitate nor distract him. He neither raved nor despaired. He was serene and sane.

"He saw life clearly and he saw it whole."

He looked through the problem to its true solution. He knew the secret which justifies the ways of God to man. He knew the secret by which an eternal harmony is to be brought into the apparent discords of life. He knew the secret by which men living in an unequal world, and accepting its inequality as the condition of their present existence, can still become partakers of a perfect, peaceful equity, and citizens of an invisible, imperishable city of God. That secret was none other than the highest, holiest teaching of Jesus, the divine truth of election to service.

I

Before we set our hearts to take in the meaning of this truth, let us try to get them in tune for it by listening to some of the other teachings of Jesus which are meant to quiet and steady us in the contemplation of the unevenness of human existence.

And first of all he reminds us that our real happiness in this world does not depend upon our outward condition, but upon our inward state. "The life is more than meat and the body than raiment."1 "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." 2 The land of wealth is not the empire of peace. Joy is not bounded on the north by poverty, on the east by obscurity, on the west by simplicity, and on the south by servitude. It runs far over these borders on every side. The lowliest, plainest, narrowest life may be the sweetest. Most of the disciples of Jesus were peasants, but they were as happy, as contented, even in this world, as if they had been princes. There was more gladness and singleness of heart in that frugal breakfast of broiled fish and bread beside the boats on the shore of the sea of Tiberias,' than in the splen

1 St. Matt. 6:25.

2 St. Luke 12: 15.

3 St. John 21:1-13.