it gives him the vision and the touch of God. It reaches down to the common, elemental things of life, to the life at the fireside, in the fields and on the street. Its first scene on pictured in the earth the scene which is imagination and worship of Christendom was the stable of an inn in a Syrian village, where a young mother is sitting by the manger in which her Babe is sleeping. And when that Child grew to manhood, He mingled with fishermen on the lake-shore and artisans on the street and tax-gatherers and Rabbis at their dinner-tables. Everywhere He touched life, felt its struggle, read its secret ciphers and crowned it with transcendent idealities. His religion, despite the distortions which it has suffered, has made its idealities facts in the lives of men. The beautiful Christ has come into our life. With all the ancient wrongs that are still working hurt and shame to it, we to-day must read it and live it with the interpretation which He has given it. VIII. THE PEACE OF CHRIST. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. ST. JOHN xiv. 27. E cannot receive or even understand this WE bequest of Christ, except we recognize two facts: one touching the Giver, the other touching the gift. "My peace I give unto you," Christ said. That great word " 'peace He claimed and made His own. Of all the types of peace possible to man He singled out one and called it "My peace." There are certain books which are crowned and canonized as the immortals of literature; which retain their freshness and power through all the vibrations of the world's thought; on whose pages men of all centuries and all climes find echoes to the deepest voices of 820400 |