an inquiring world. Heterogeneity is the law of life. We do not want uniformity of religious type. If we are Greeks, let us be Greek Christians, and not try to conform mechanically to the Jewish pattern. If we are large-minded in other things, let us not sacrifice the advantage, and by way of conformity adopt some small or ignorant conception of the Christ. If we are practical, let us put Jesus at the centre of business. If we are emotional in daily life, loving our families and friends effusively, then let no cold propriety restrain us in our expressions of love to Jesus. Do not let accidental church connections determine wholly the fashion of our devotion. And in all our contact with the hesitating world about us, let us remember that, however contemptuous it may be of us and our notions or our church, it is uniformly respectful in reference to Jesus. That is a remarkable fact, profoundly significant of things which are about to be. What of coarse and vulgar skepticism there is, is a relic of the days of Paine, and is dying out in the atmosphere of the nineteenth century. The doubt of to-day is earnest and critical, but it is respectful. It says, "Sir, we would see Jesus." It has learned to believe in and respect the manhood of faith in Jesus and loyalty to him; and self-respectful and conscious of rectitude itself, it asks of us that we treat it with respect, and show it the basis of our belief, that if possible it may come into a like precious faith.

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Finally, the modern spirit of inquiry concerning Jesus is not given to doting upon a false individualism. It has learned that true individualism is not inconsistent with the fellowship of research. It already feels the promptings of the spirit of wholeness, or holiness, and it pursues truth in company with those who are congenial with it. To borrow a metaphor from the athletic field, it does fine team-work in its efforts to win the goal of truth. This is not the age of the closet philosopher, spinning metaphysics out of himself like the solitary spider. The rounding up of facts for inductive purposes compels coöperation. Where two or three are met together in Jesus' name, his Christhood will appear. We," men are saying, we would see Jesus." The sense of brotherhood of soul, the universal Spirit, has melted thought together, that thus the answer to the question concerning Jesus may be given. A spirit is a corporate force. We live in the dispensation of the spirit, and the we who would see Jesus is the universal we, the mind of humanity, of which each smaller group of truth-seekers was a part and a prophecy. I have begun to look after my health, that I may, if possible, win the inestimable privilege of living through the next twenty years. Oh, what years they will be! The central figure of the world's life in the coming years will be Jesus. I do not ask you, my friend, to choose Jesus as the most important fact in your life for the next

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twenty years. That is not for you to choose, any more than it is for you to choose whether the sun shall be the centre of the solar system for those two decades. There he is at the very right hand of Eternal Majesty. Behold him! The next few years are to witness such a recognition of the supreme importance of the personality of Jesus, such an exaltation and enthronement of him, as will visibly change the face of the earth. Be in ' it, young men and women. Get what else you can, get a living, get wealth, get position, get office, but above all things get at the fact concerning the personality of Jesus. And in so doing you will gain an enthusiasm that will make life for you there is no life worth living without enthusiasm. Enthusiasm,- God-intoxication is the translation of it, enthusiasm is life; and the knowledge of Jesus alone in these days will give a permanent enthusiasm, that will not fall into fanaticism on one hand, or die out into disenchantment on the other. Let us enter into life: and this is life eternal, to know God and Jesus Christ, to be enthused, God-intoxicated, by Jesus.

VIII.

THE TRANSFIGURED AND TRANSFIGURING CROSS.

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. - GAL. vi. 14.

"THE cross of Jesus has in a strange way held man spellbound, and forced him to listen to its story like a child who cannot choose but hear." It is a wondrous fascination this symbol has gained. The original cross was in itself the last thing fitted to touch the imagination, being only a post some seven or eight feet high with a peg upon which the body rested astride, having the arms nailed across the top, which formed a T. There were other shapes, but this was the common one, and all were equally unpoetic. It was the instrument for the torture of slaves and baser criminals, and was sought for Jesus by his haters because it was thought that a death so disgraceful would forever destroy any influence he might have won with the people. Their plan was "refutation by odium." The law of Moses had provided for the hanging of the bodies of certain detested criminals, and had meant it to be equivalent to a curse; hence the saying, "Cursed is every one that hang

eth upon a tree." Thus it was determined that all the messianic claims of Jesus should be forever silenced by heaping contumely upon him in the manner of his death. Wonderful is the irony with which the wider law of history confutes the reasonings and overthrows the schemes of those who think they understand how to control events. For Jesus did not transgress, but rather fulfilled the prophecies and necessities of the case, when he transfigured the disgrace into honor and, by hanging upon it, metamorphosed the cross into the throne and symbol of divinely human empire.

It is a mistake to say that such a transformation could never have been foreseen or foretold. Socrates had more than a glimpse of its possibility; and while the Hebrew prophets did not predict the thing itself, they did in their sublimer flights gain glimpses of the principle of it. They saw that the greatest benefactors of the race had been those whom the race cast out as unfit for a place in society; that he who fulfilled the highest law of humanity had to do it by consenting to become an outlaw, to be numbered among the transgressors, to be despised and rejected, to have men turn their faces from him. These prophecies went unheard and unheeded, and only later ages went back and saw how, under the unexampled suffering of the Captivity, some of the psalmists had vaguely guessed the great law which was fulfilled when the cross became the centre of the