meant every spiritual good their hearts could crave, either for themselves or others.

To show how large this fact bulked in the thought of the apostolic church, we may note a few other New Testament words. "Members of God's household," is one of Paul's descriptions of the body of Christian believers at Ephesus. (Eph. 2:19.) But these believers were only the same in privilege as all the other believers of that and succeeding times. God at home with his children, or God's children at home with him, is the thought conveyed to the mind by this word.

That they thought of God as really dwelling here, with his people as his children, is made very plain in 2nd Cor. 6:16-18, where Paul makes the fact the basis of a call to the deepest worship and the highest possible holiness.

Finally, in Chapter 21 of the Revelation the fact is presented in the most inclusive way. "And I saw the Holy City, Jerusalem, descending new out of Heaven from God, like a bride adorned in readiness for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, which said 'See! the tabernacle of God is set up among men. God will dwell among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be among them, and he will wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 21:2-4.) He showed me Jerusalem, the Holy City, descending out of heaven from God, filled with the glory of God (verse 10).

"And I saw no temple there, for the Lord, our

God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. The city has no need of 'the sun or the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God illuminated it,' and its lamp was the Lamb. "The nations will + walk by the light of it; and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. Its gates shall never be shut by day,' and there will be no night there. And men will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. (Verses 22-26.)

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"And the angel showed me 'a river of the Water of Life,' as clear as crystal, issuing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of the street of the city. On each side of the river was a tree of Life which bore twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 'Everything that is accursed will cease to be.' The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face and his name will be in their foreheads." (Rev. 22: 1-4.) All this splendid imagery, drawn largely from the older prophets, conveyed one clear message to the hearts of the early Christians. God, as in Christ, was omnipresent among men, "reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning men's offences against them." (2nd Cor. 5:19.) The glory of his holy love shone forth in and through his church, enlightening, alluring and claiming men as his own, and blessing them with every good; and that glory would shine on till all peoples were won, and the whole

race found itself permanently rejoicing in the presence of God himself, and in the possession of every bounty in his gift. And Jesus Christ, the Lamb, was already the sign and pledge of it all. (Rom. 8:32.)

IV

THE MAKING OF JESUS

Each true man is always in the making. His making begins centuries before his birth and continues as long as he consciously chooses the better instead of the worse and the higher good in succession to the lower. Our Cromwells and Lincolns, our Shakespeares and Goethes, our Luthers and Wesleys, our Darwins and Wallaces and Huxleys and Haeckels, our Hugos and Dickenses, our Jameses and Bergsens have not sprung from the Veddahs of Ceylon, the African Bushmen or the Australian "Blacks." Heredity of race is a mighty factor in human affairs, and a race must itself have arrived at greatness before it can produce the intellectual, moral and spiritual giants of the world.

Jesus sprang from God's spiritual aristocracy, from a race that knew him, had fellowship with him, and rejoiced in his righteousness and his love, till their intellects and imaginations guided their pens into the production of a religious literature incomparable at once in its grandeur and its sweetness, its sublimity and its tenderness. Of Israel it has well been said that "the voices of her seers and singers sound silvery and soft

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through the centuries." And it is quite as true, on the other hand, that the lightnings and thunder peals of her Sinai awe men's hearts at all the ends of the world. Jesus himself recognized the fact that the beginnings of his manhood were to be found as far back as Abraham at least. He sprang from no one of the peoples that were "far off," but from the one people that was "near." (Eph. 2:17.) Whatever, therefore, remains to be told besides, it is certainly true that all the available advantages of the religious and spiritual sort, derivable from a given race of men, were made the personal inheritance of Jesus. other race existing upon the planet at the time, or that had ever existed upon it, could have conferred half as much. If the Greek stood supreme in purely intellectual acumen or subtlety, and the Roman in his genius for government, the Jew was still more a master in things pertaining to the spirit. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah and "belonged to the family and house of David." (Luke 2:4.) It may also be said in passing that all that is true of Jesus in this respect is true, too, of John the Baptist, only John sprang from the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron. (Luke 1:15.)

Three other things besides race are worthy of consideration in connection with the birth of every child. These are immediate parentage, prenatal influences and environment. Taking these up in the order in which I have just named them, and