condition. There is an America that resembles that poor slave an America that bears children into the worst oppressions, an America that would fill the land with ignorance, distrust, infinite greed, and utter anarchy; an America that would end a headlong and horrible career in selfdestruction. That is the America against which we must fight, not only on election day, but upon all days, not only with our ballots, but with our total Christianity. For there is another America that resembles the free woman an America that gives the son of promise to mankind, an America that, united in herself, exulting in her august mission, inspired in the presence of her vast opportunity, and devoted to the highest good of all within her borders, creates a new epoch in human history and kindles a new hope for the world. The whole power of Christianity, organized and unorganized, stands out against the nation that is from beneath, the nation that is in bondage and that bears children into bondage; it stands forth in behalf of the nation that is from above, that is free and that is the glorious mother of us all. The Christian Church holds in vision two Americas; it sees the actual America, its sins, its crimes, its miseries, its profound needs, and the ideal America in all its purity, majesty, and power. It believes that the actual America is an illusion, the invention of our weakness and sin; and that

the ideal America is the abiding reality, the everlasting truth, God's creation wrought in light and beauty and instinct with undying life. That the one America may pass, and that the other America may more and more take its vacant place; that the nation of incapacity, selfishness and crime may go and the nation founded in faith and in love may come should be one great end of the Church's existence, one great object of its prayers and toils and sufferings, one of the strongest of its many appeals for support to the community in which it is established.

XXIII

THE IDEALIST AND THE EPHESIAN

BEASTS

"If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

1 Cor. xv, 32.

In this chapter Paul is reasoning in behalf of the immortality of man. His major premise is that the man Jesus survived death and after death made Himself known as a living being to his disciples. His conclusion from this grand premise is that all men because they are men survive death; the survival of the one Perfect Man being the assurance of the survival of the race of which He is the great representative. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.

The words of the text are an interruption of the main argument. The apostle has been seeking the assurance of immortality in the typical life outside the great current of human experience; he has been resting the universal hope upon a mighty exceptional instance. He now descends into the depths of the tragic conflict of man, his conflict with the wild passions of his heart, in behalf of the Christian ideal of personal and so

Icial worth. The vision of this conflict checks for a moment the march of his reasoning, draws his eyes closer to the struggle of the Christian idealist, compels the apostle to declare, in a metaphor that is a beacon-light flash in the darkness and wildness of the storm, the tremendous issues working in the tragic courses of human contention for high ends. "If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Here in the main argument and in the episode are two distinct visions of life. There is the vision of the destiny of Jesus, the perfect human life, the vision, too, of the life that completes itself in the fellowship of the Lord. There is the second vision, the vision of life unmade and in the tremendous process of making. These two distinct views of life attach themselves in a different manner to the faith in the hereafter.

For the favored existence immortality is but the extension beyond death of what is present here and now. To the fortunate person to-day immortality often seems an addition to this earthly life rather than something inseparable from its character and meaning. Such persons ripen toward that world as the happiness of this world exhausts itself. In a sweetly sensuous way they are apt to sing with Spenser, –

"Sleepe after toyle, port after stormy seas,

Peace after warre, death after life, does greatly please."

The vision of life unmade and in the fiery process of making is another thing. Here we approach God, we approach Christ, we approach hope, not from without but from within. Our God is our light and our salvation on the black field of our battle for righteous manhood; our Christ is within, and the hope of glory lives in the pulse-beats of our fighting heart. As the bright moon rises and rides over the tides of the stormy sea, their calm sovereign, so over "this maddening maze of things" in human life, while "toss'd by storm and flood," there appears as the supreme ruler of it the splendid image of the infinite worth of man's soul.

Two distinct types of human experience emerge here to which I beg your attention for a moment: the highly favored type and the tragic type. These two experiences are often included as contrasts in the history of the same person. There is Paul in Arabia. He is there with his new life in an environment of peace; he is there with his Christian ideal in the sunshine of happy solitude, with all the forces of his Christian soul playing freely into the perfect sympathy of the time and the place. Here the great tranquil soul of the apostle was matched with the great tranquil environment. Those three years in Arabia