If to-morrow you were to see somebody drowning, and a voice whispered in your ears, 'Let him drown; he is not a good husband, he is not a good father, he is a weak, sinful, selfish man;' you would probably say, 'For all that I will save him if I can.' What an irrational sentiment! but there it is, nevertheless; something in your heart that beats for the man because he is a man; now that something is in every man's heart. Christ did not put it there when he came on earth; he found it there; all that he did was to seize upon this latent sympathy, fan it into a flame, and place this enthusiasm of humanity as the corner-stone of his system. Christian brethren, take this lesson home to yourselves; if you have never learnt it, try to learn it now; if you have never so loved the world, try to love it so now. Remember there is a something in everybody which is worthy of your love. You must learn to look at your fellow-creatures kindly, in the spirit of a little child, to love as the uncorrupted child loves; to love as God loves who makes his sun to rise upon the evil and the good; to love as Christ loved, who loved His own even unto the end. 45. Nor is this all. You have set before you an example; you are not called upon to lead, but to follow. Is this an empty help? Learn, then, the force of example. You know how from time to time some new feat of incredible skill is performed, and people say that such a thing was never seen before; but a few years only have passed, and there are fifty people doing this very same thing. Why? in the first place someone has not written or speculated about it, but someone has done it, and that has kindled the taste and awakened energy in others. So Christ lived out the true life, and now others have learned to pass through this world walking in his footsteps; they have learned to worship the Father in spirit and in truth; they have learned to treat God's creatures aright, not looking upon a woman to lust after her, and not hankering after every pleasure that comes in their way; not being angry without a cause, not hating, not returning evil for evil, but bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law. And this, we are told, is the impossible type of character. Why, it has been realised ten thousand times since the coming of Christ. Men have looked at His patience and faith, and learned to be patient and trustful; they have seen how He bore with human infirmities, and they have learned to be kind to the unthankful, and forgiving to the unmerciful; they have seen how He suffered, and they have borne their sufferings meekly; they have turned their dying eyes to His cross, as it stands flaming out in the night of the ages, and such a light has come upon their wan faces that others have seen it and glorified the Father which is in Heaven. 46. In conclusion, what shall we now say to those who ask us to show the superiority of Christian ethics over Heathen or even Jewish ethics. We must say that the system of the Stoics, which taught men to be indifferent to both pleasure and pain, was grand in theory, but it left out the human heart; the system of Epicurus, which taught men to live only for pleasure and flee pain, was wise in practice, but it left out God; the Academics were neither wise nor grand, their best philosophy was to prove that all previous philosophies meant nothing— if not scepticism. Neither the philosophy of Aristotle nor Plato can be said to provide a gospel for the world at large; and although Socrates, as far as we see him through Xenophon, Aristophanes and Plato, was essentially a man among men, and taught the great truth of personal communion with God; yet the defects and impurities which he permitted to his disciples make it difficult to regard his system, if system he had, as one of ideal excellence, or his type of life as at all comparable in elevation to the Christian type. Lastly, the Jews, as we have seen, had a vast number of scattered sayings full of high spiritual truth. They had emancipated themselves from the letter of the law, yet they had not attained the freedom of the Spirit ; they lacked, amid the multitude of their precepts and sentiments, a settled ideal; the scattered rays of truth had not been gathered into a focus; there was some light, but hardly any heat. The Scribes sat in Moses's seat-it was well to mind what they said, they had light-it was also significant to mark that what they said did not seem to influence their own lives. 'All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works, for they say and do not'-they had no heat. But Christ, unlike the Stoic, knew what was in man and honoured the heart. Christ, unlike Epicurus, pleased not Himself, but endured the cross, despising the shame, and showed us plainly of the Father. Christ, unlike the Academics, taught that faith-the inner trust in Godnot scepticism, could remove mountains. Christ, unlike Socrates, taught the necessity of that inward as well as outward purity without which no man can see God. Christ, unlike Aristotle and Plato, preached a gospel to the poor and ignorant as well as to the rich and learned. Christ proposed a scheme of conduct. He created a type of life possible and worthy for all men to imitate. The Christian arrangement of the virtues and vices was absolutely unique. The spirit of life produced by that arrangement was in every sense of the word a new spirit. The world had not seen any life like the life of Christ before; the world has seen various approximations to it since. It still inspires our philanthropy, it still dominates our civilisation; and the cross at the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral-the central monument of the most powerful city in the world-still bears witness to the triumph of the divine Galilæan, And lastly, what Judaism could not do, that Christ did. He fulfilled the Law, for He taught not only the precept, but He showed the practice, of an universal love. A love from which it was impossible to escape-which could never grow old, nor fade, nor pass away; which no infidelity could cool, and no cruelty could quench, no sorrow dishearten, and no despair crucify. He has washed the toiling feet of tired humanity; He has |