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Who best can drink his cup of woe, Triumphant over pain; Who patient bears his cross below, He follows in His train!

They met the tyrant's brandished steel, The lions gory mane; They bowed their necks the death to feel: Who follows in their train?

REGINALD HEBER

The universe is not awry. Fate and man are not altogether at odds. Yet there is a perpetual combat going on between man and nature, and between the power of character and the tyranny of circumstance, death, and sin. The great soul is tossed into the midst of the strife, the longing, and the aspirations of the world. He rises Victor who is triumphant in some great experience of the race.

The first energy is combative: the Warrior is the primitive hero. There are natures to whom mere combat is a joy. Strife is the atmosphere in which they find their finest physical and spiritual development. In the early times, there must have been those who stood apart from their tribesmen in contests of pure athletic skill,--in running, jumping, leaping, wrestling, in laying on thew and thigh with arm, hand, and curled fist in sheer delight of action, and of the display of strength. As foes arose, these athletes of the tribe or clan would be the first to rush forth to slay the wild beast, to brave the sea and storm, or to wreak vengeance on assailing tribes. Their valor was their insignia. Their prowess ranked them. Their exultation was in their freedom and strength.

Such men did not ask a life of ease. Like Tortulf the Forester, they learned "how to strike the foe, to sleep on the bare ground, to bear hunger and toil, summer's heat and winter's frost,--how to fear nothing but ill-fame." They courted danger, and asked only to stand as Victors at the last.

Hence we read of old-world warriors,--of Gog and Magog and the Kings of Bashan; of the sons of Anak; of Hercules, with his lion-skin and club; of Be?wulf, who, dragging the sea-monster from her lair, plunged beneath the drift of sea-foam and the flame of dragon-breath, and met the clutch of dragon-teeth. We read of Turpin, Oliver, and Roland,--the sweepers-off of twenty heads at a single blow; of Arthur, who slew Ritho, whose mantle was furred with the beards of kings; of Theodoric and Charlemagne, and of Richard of the Lion-heart.

The world has come into other and greater battle-days. This is an era of great spiritual conflicts, and of great triumphs. To-day faith calls the soul of man to arms. It is a clarion to awake, to put on strength, and to go forth to Holy War. If there were no fighting work in the Christian life, much of the intense energy and interest of the race would be unaroused. There are apathetic natures who do not want to undertake the difficult,--sluggish souls who would rather not stir from their present position. And there are cowards who run to cover. But there is in all strong natures the primitive combative instinct,--the let-us-see-which-is-the-stronger, which delights in contests, which is undismayed by opposition, and which grows firmer through the warfare of the soul.

It is this phase of the Christian life which is most needed to-day,--the warrior-spirit, the all-conquering soul. In entering the Christian life, one must put out of his heart the expectation that it is to be an easy life, or one removed from toil and danger. It is pre?minently the adventurous life of the world,--that in which the most happens, as well as that in which the spiritual possibilities are the greatest. It is a life full of splendor, of excitement, of trial, of tests of courage and endurance, and is meant to appeal to those who are the very bravest and the best.

There are two forms of conquest to which the soul of man is called--the inner and the outer. The inner is the conquest of the evil within his own nature; the outer is the struggle against the evil forces of the world--the constructive task of building up, under warring conditions, the spiritual kingdom of God.

The real world is far more subtle than we as yet understand. When we dive down into the deep, sky and air and houses disappear. We enter a new world--the under-world of water, and things that glide and swim; of sea-grasses and currents; of flowing waves that lap about the body with a cool chill; of palpitating color, that, at great depths, becomes a sort of darkness; of sea-beds of shell and sand, and bits of scattered wreckage; of ooze and tangled sea-plants, dusky shapes, and fan-like fins.

Or if we look upward we reach an over-world, where moons and suns are circling in the heights. What draws them together? What keeps a subtle distance between them, which they never cross? How do they, age after age, run a predestined course? We drop a stone. What binds it earthward? Under our feet run magnetic currents that flow from pole to pole. In the clouds above, there are electric vibrations which cannot be described in exact terms.

Thus also, in spiritual experiences, there are currents which we cannot measure or describe. The psychic world is the final world, though its towers and pinnacles no eye hath seen. If we try to shut out for an hour the outer world, and descend into the soul-world of the life of man, we find ourselves in a new environment, and with an outlook over new forms and powers. We find ourselves in a world of images and attractions, of impulses and desires, of instincts and attainments. It is not only a world of separate and individual souls, but each soul is as a thousand; for within each man there is an inner host contending for mastery, and everywhere is the uproar of battle and of spiritual strife.

What is the Self that abides in each man? Is it not the consciousness of existence, together with a consciousness of the power of choice? Our individuality lies in the fact that we can decide, choose, and rule among the various contestant impulses of our souls. Herein is the possibility of victory and also the possibility of defeat.

Looking inward, we find that Self began when man began. We inherit our dispositions from Adam, as well as from our parents and a long ancestral line. When the first men and women were created, forces were set in action which have resulted in this Me that to-day thinks and wills and loves. Heredity includes savagery and culture, health and disease, empire and serfdom, hope and despair. Each man can say: "In me rise impulses that ran riot in the veins of Anak, that belonged to Libyan slaves and to the Ptolemaic line. I am Aryan and Semite, Roman and Teuton: alike I have known the galley and the palm-set court of kings. Under a thousand shifting generations, there was rising the combination that I to-day am. In me culminates, for my life's day, human history until now."

What is environment? Is it the material horizon that bounds us? If so, where does it end? Our first environment is a crib, a room, our mother's eyes. Sensations of hunger, heat, and motion beat upon the baby-brain; there is a vague murmur of sound in the baby-ears. Yet it is this babe who, in after days, has all the universe for his soul's demesne! His environment stretches out to towns and rivers, shore and sea. Looking upward into space, he can view a star whose distance is a thousand times ten thousand miles. Beyond the path of his feet or of his sight, there is the path of thought, which leads him into new countries, new climes, new years! His meditations are upon ages gone; his work competes with that of the dead. In his reveries and imaginings, he can transport himself anywhither, and can commune with any friend or god. Hence to be master of one's environment is really to have the universe within one's grasp.

Each asks himself at some time: How shall I become one of the Victors of the race? Is it in me? Mankind is weighted by every previous sin. Where am I free? How am I free? Can I do as I choose? Or are there bourns of conduct beyond which I can never go? Am I foreordained to sin? Do the stars in their courses lay limitations on free will?

There are in man two forces working: a human longing after God, and, in response, God inly working in the soul. The Victor is he who, in his own life, unites these two things: a great longing after the god-like, which makes him yearn for virtue,--and the divine power within him, through which and by which he is triumphant over time and death and sin.

Whatever our trials, sorrows, or temptations, joy and courage are ever meant to be in the ascendant; life, however it may break in storms upon us, is not meant to beat down our souls. Unless we are triumphant, we are not wholly useful or well trained. Will and heart together work for victory.

As there flashes and thrills through all nature a subtle electric vibration which is the supreme form of physical energy, so there runs through the history of mankind a current of spiritual inspiration and power. To possess this magnetism of soul, this heroism of life, this flame-like flower of character, is to be Victor in the great combats of the race. It is the spirit of courage, energy, and love. Nothing is too hard for it, nothing too distasteful, nothing too insignificant. Through all the course of duty it spurs one to do one's best. Its essence is to overcome. This is the indwelling Holy Spirit, wherein is freedom, power, and rest. To its final triumph all things are accessory. To joy, all powers converge.

HORATIUS BONAR

It is a world of voices in which we live. We are daily visited by appeals which are ministering to our growth and progress, or which are tending to our spiritual downfall. There are the voices of nature, in sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the voices of playfellows and companions,--voices long stilled, it may be, in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of sorrow, of aspiration, and of joy.

Look, if you will, upon the World of Souls, many-tiered and vast, stretching from day's end to day's end,--a world of hunger and of anger, of toiling and of striving, of clamor and of triumph,--a dim, upheaving mass, which from century to century wakes, and breathes, and sleeps again! Years roll on, tides flow, but there is no cessation of the march of years, and no whisper of a natural change. Is it not a strange thing that one voice, and only one, should have really won the hearing of the race? What is this voice of Jesus, so enduring, matchless, and supreme? What does it promise, for the help or hope of man?

There are some who say that Jesus has held the attention and allegiance of the race by an appeal to the religious instinct; that all men naturally seek God, and long to know Him. But if we try to define the religious instinct, we shall find it a hard task. What might be called a religious instinct leads to human sacrifice upon the Aztec altar; directs the Hindu to cast the new-born child in the stream, the friend to sacrifice his best friend to a pagan deity.

There are others who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of man,--to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin--our need of pardon. But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed by intense conviction or despair.

The truth seems to be that Christ appeals to our whole selves. He calls us by an attraction which is unique. In the universe there exists a force which we must recognize--though we do not yet in the least understand it--which is gradually drawing the race Christward. The law of spiritual gravitation is, that by all the changing impulses of our nature we are drawn upward unto Him. Spohr's lovely anthem voices this cry of the soul:

Not only that, but each man who lives to-day has less possible material dominion than he had who preceded him. Only so many square feet of earth, and now there are more to walk upon them! The ground we tread was once trodden by the feet of those long dead. I am taking up their room, and in due time I must myself depart, that there may be footway for those who are to come after me. Only the under-sod is really mine--the little earth-barrow to which I go.

There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one: What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself? When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the limits of Myself?

Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time and space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which are never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire different things.

Incompleteness lies on life--restlessness is in the heart. True love has no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys, skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.

Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure of the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In Him we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all our dreams.

The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this, and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do. Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling for themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What wears the soul out is not the work of life itself--it is its drudgery, its monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do not wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.

Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as the great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but to redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of history--it is also the most simple. I look down over the world, as a master upon his men. My work is not to found an earthly kingdom, as some have thought; it is not primarily to set up industrial establishments, or syndicates, or ways of transport and trade. My work is to build up in the universe a spiritual kingdom of energy, power, and progress. To this kingdom all material things are accessory. In My hand are all abilities, as well as all knowledge. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without My notice. Not a lily blooms without My delight. Not a brick is laid, not a stone is set, not an axe is swung, except beneath My eye. I provide for My own. To each man I assign his work, his task. If he takes upon him only what I give him to do, he will never be under-paid, or over-tired.

Hence the first step towards an industrial millennium is to arise and do what Jesus bids. Heaven is heaven because no one is unruly there, or idle, or lazy, or vicious, or morose. Each soul is at true and happy work. Each energy is absorbed; each hour is alive with interest, and there are no oppressive thoughts or ways.

Sin lifts bars against success: the root of failure lies in irreligion. Pride, conceit, disobedience, malice, evil-speaking, covetousness, idolatry, vice, oppression, injustice, and lack of truth and honor fight more strongly against one's career than any other foe. No sin is without its lash; no experience of evil but has its rebound. To expect a higher moral insight in middle age because of a larger experience of sin in youth, is as reasonable as to look for sanity of judgment in middle age because in youth a man had fits!

Looking at ourselves in a mirror, do we not sometimes think how we would fashion ourselves if we could create a new self, in the image of some ideal which is before us? Would we not make ourselves wholly beautiful if we could make ourselves?

Even so, looking out upon our own spirits, do we not some day rouse to the distortion and deformity of sin? Do we wish to retain these grimacing phases of ourselves? Do we not yearn eagerly for the dignity and beauty of high virtue? Do we not long for the graces and perfections which make up a radiant and happy life? If we could be born again, would we not be born a more spiritual being?

It is to this new birth that Jesus calls our souls. All around the babe, hid in its mother's womb, there lies a world of which it has neither sight nor knowledge. The fact that the babe is ignorant does not change the fact that the world is there. So about our souls there lies the invisible world of God, which, until born of the Spirit, we do not see or understand. It is a world in which God is everywhere; in which there is no First Cause, except God; in which there is no will, except the will of God; in which there is no true and perfect love, except from God; no truth, except revealed by God; no power, except from Him.

Conversion is the outlook over a world which is arranged, not for our own glory, but for the good of God's creatures; in which what we do is necessary, fundamental, permanent--not because we ourselves have done it well, nor, in truth, because we have done it at all--but because what we have done is a part of the universe which God is building. We change from a self-centre to a God-centre; from the thought of whether the world applauds to whether God approves; from the thought of keeping our own life to the thought of preserving our own integrity; from isolation from all other souls to a sympathy with them, an understanding of their needs, and a desire to help their lives. It is a turning from a delight in sin, or an indifference to sin, or merely a moral aversion to it, to a deep-rooted hatred of every thought and act of sin, to penitence, and to an earnest desire to pattern after God.

It is an impressive thought, that nothing in the universe ever gets used up. It changes form, motion, semblance,--but the force, the energy, neither wastes nor dies away. Air--it is as fresh as the air that blew over the Pharaohs. Sun--it is as undimmed as the sun that looked down on the completion of Cheops. Earth--it is as unworn as the earth that was trodden by the cavemen.

No generation can ever bequeath to us a single new material atom. The race is ever in old clothes. Nor can we hand down to others one atom which was not long ere we were born. Yet the vitality of the universe is being constantly increased, and this increase is also permanent. God has a great deal more to work with now than a thousand years ago.

For not all energy is material. With each birth there comes a new force into the world, and its influence never dies. The body is born of ages past, of the material stores of centuries; but the soul, in its living, thinking, working power, is a new phase of energy added to the energy of the race.

This thought gives us a new zest for life. There is an appetite which is of the soul. It is this wish for growth, for the development of our powers, for a larger life for ourselves and for those who shall come after us.

Is there any one who wishes to stay always where he is to-day?--to be always what he is this morning? Beyond the hill-top lies our dream. Not all the voices that call men from place to place are audible ones. We hear whispers from a far-off leader; we are beckoned by an unseen guide. Out of ancestry, tradition, talent, and training each departs to his own way.

What calls is not largeness of place--it is largeness of ideal. To each of us, thinking of this one and that one who has taken a large part in the shaping of the world, there comes a feeling: Beside all these I am in a narrow way! What can I think that shall be worth the consideration of the race? What can I do that shall be a stepping-stone to progress? What can I hope that shall unseal other eyes to the universal glory, comfort others in the universal pain? We say: I do not want to be mewed up here, while others are out where thrones and empires are sweeping by! I do not want to parse verbs, add fractions, and mark ledgers, while others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite." Says Tennyson:

These aspirations are prophetic. Does a clod-hopper dream? We move toward our desires. The wish for growth is but the call of Jesus to our souls. We sometimes hear of the "limitations of life." What are they? Who set them? Man himself, not God. The call of Jesus urges the soul of man to possibilities which are infinite.

A large life is the fulfilment of God's ideal of our lives--the life which, from all eternity, He has looked upon as possible for us. Could any career be grander than the one that God has planned for us? God does not think petty thoughts: He longs for grandeur for us all.

The chief thing toward which we are moving is, I believe, the Enthronement of the Christ. Christ has always been, in the hearts of the few, enthroned and enshrined. Even in the dark years of mediaeval superstition and unrest, there were the cloistered ones who maintained traditions of faith and did works of mercy, as there were knightly ones who upheld the ministry of chivalry, and followed, though afar, the tender shining of the Holy Grail. But now all the signs point to a great and general recognition of the Christ--Christ to be lifted high on the hands of the nations, to His throne above the stars!

A new spiritual note is to be heard in modern subjects of study, is noticeable in all paths of intellectual prestige. History is no more looked upon as the story of the trophies of warriors, conquerors, and kings. History, rising out of dim mists, is seen to be the marching and the countermarching of nations in the throes of progress and of social change. It is not the story of princes alone, but of peasants as well; the result of myriads of small, obscure lives; of changing conditions; of the movements of great economic, psychologic, and spiritual forces. Looking backward over the moving processional of the nations of the earth, we may see how, without rest, without pause, through countless ages, the myriad legions of men have been passing across the scene of life--passing, and fading away!

Empires have risen, and empires have decayed; dynasties have been buried, and long lines of kings, wrapping stately robes about them, have lain down to die. Thrones have been overturned, armies and navies have been mustered and scattered, land and sea have been peopled and made desolate, as the thronging tribes and races have lived their little life and passed away. Babylon and Assyria, India and Arabia, Egypt and Persia, Rome and Greece,--each of these has had its lands and conquests, its song and story, its wars and tumults, its wrath and praise. Under all the tides of conquest and endeavor but one fact shines supreme: the steady progress of the Cross.

One principle of growth and development is being slowly revealed,--an approach to symmetry and civic form, which is seen in freedom, justice, popular education, the rise of masses, the power of public opinion, and a general regard for life, health, peace, national prosperity, and the individual weal. The day has passed when men merely lived, slept, ate, fought; they are now involved in an intricate and progressive civilization. Sociology, ethics, and politics are newly blazed pathways for its development, its guidance, and its ideals. We are moving on to new dreams of patriotism, of statesmanship, and of civil rule.

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