world's care and sorrow; He has had prodigal children, and been broken-hearted by His own friends; He also has been misunderstood, persecuted, insulted. What trial of man has not also been the lot of God? What sorrow has not been tasted by God? What sin has not been committed against Him? Before we pray He has heard us, not only because His ear is open to our cry but because " In all our affliction He has been afflicted, and so the Angel of His presence saves us."

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy Maker is not by;

Thinkest thou canst weep a tear
And thy Maker is not near.

O He gives to us His joy
That our grief He may destroy,
Till our grief is fled and gone

He doth sit by us and moan.

Outside holy scripture there has not been a more intimate apprehension of the fellow suffering of God than these words of Blake.

He doth sit by us and moan.

VIII

JESUS' APPRECIATION OF MORALITY

"Then Jesus beholding him loved him."-St. Mark's Gospel x. 21.

THEN it is recorded in this vivid gospel,

WHE

as by one who had seen the affection in the Master's eye, that Jesus loved the young ruler, we ought to allow their full meaning to the words. Jesus was not one to mistake a pleasant manner for a true heart, or to bestow the approval of emotion where His judgment condemned. He searched men as with fire, and called each man by his own name. If Jesus looked with favour upon any one and made overtures of friendship to him, then be sure that man deserved well of the eternal law and of all good people. This ruler did not make the highest claim, nor did he trade upon false pretences. He did not profess religion-the passion which fills the soul with love unto the Deity, and moves one to sacrifice everything for an unseen cause.

What he professed was modest and becoming, that he had been an obedient son, that he had lived cleanly, that he had not told lies, that he had done his duty by his neighbour, that in short he had carried himself as a kindly and honourable gentleman. This he was, and because he was this Jesus loved him. And the attitude of Jesus to this kind of man suggests various useful ideas, and is also charged with encouragement.

Upon the face of it Jesus did not regard a person who is moral, but not religious, as utterly depraved. The depravity of such people is laid down in certain Church standards, and is still, one gathers, believed by many. "We are," says an ancient document which was deliberately written in England and hastily adopted in Scotland, “indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil." It is also asserted in the same Confession that the works of an unregenerate man are "sinful and cannot please God." Those deliverances are supported by quotations from various parts of holy scripture, not, however, so much from the Gospels as from the Pentateuch. People have been browbeaten by those statements into words

of self-condemnation against which they have no corresponding experience, and which they would justly resent on the lips of their best friends. They also have taken from such teaching a pessimistic view of human nature, so that there is a striking difference between the theory of what their neighbours are and the working treatment of the same neighbours. If a person seriously believed such words then he would hold that those whom he loves, and with whom he lives, as well as those whom he knows abroad and with whom he deals, are by nature, to use the words of one of our most beautiful hymns,

False and full of sin

Really he treats them as absolutely straightforward, and relies upon their integrity. Under the influence of this morbid theology one would regard his child as a son of the devil, but with the evidence of experience he treats him as a son of God. Which creates an artificial atmosphere, and prevents us getting into touch with reality.

This doctrine of humanity is first of all wrong in theory, for it does not explain the situation.

If a person be by nature absolutely corrupt, then there is no possibility of salvation for him. Salvation is not the creation of another being, it is the restoration of the present being. If the house be so infected that there be not in it one sound stone, then it must be pulled down to the foundation and its very material scattered. Nothing will remain but an empty site, and upon it another house may be built. If I am bad through and through, then my reason, my heart, my will are all unreliable. They must go, and what remains? If a man has a weak spot in one of his lungs he may be cured, if both lungs are thoroughly rotten he must die; for there is no sound spot from which recovery may begin. Granted health somewhere, then nature can work from that centre and drive the disease out in an ever expanding circle. And Jesus believed that in every man there was a core of goodness, and to it He appealed.

This doctrine is also wrong because it is not confirmed by facts. What shall we say of the patriot who is not a saint but who dies for his country? Is not patriotism in itself, even when not crowned with religion, a good thing? What