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If it had not been for Jesus the world would yet be waiting its great moral dynamic. If it had not been for Jesus the Roman courtesan would still be the honoured member of society, impurity of private life would be boasted of, infanticide would not be a thing of the past, the brutal gladiatorial games would still be deadening man's nature to level of the beast, human slavery would not have been robbed of its greatest evils through centuries of its continued existence, nor eventually blotted out; war would even be more barbarous than it is. All these tributes does Lecky in his "History of European Morals" lay at the feet of Christianity. If Christianity could accomplish this much in supposedly rougher centuries than ours we will not falter in the midst of unchristian nations that call themselves Christian. Though clouds and darkness be round about, we will bring all the powers of Christianity to destroy war. Christ stands forever against the sword.

If it had not been for Jesus how barren would have been our conception of God! Still must it have been confessed:

"Never yet hath been broken the silence eternal,
Never yet hath been spoken in accents supernal,
God's thought of Himself."

We could not have known Him as the Father personally interested in all men everywhere. None could have proclaimed: "This is the love wherewith the Father hath loved us that we might be called the sons of God, and such we are." The Harpies and

the Fates would still have been the cruel and purposeless almoners of destiny and retribution.

If it had not been for Jesus how hopeless would have been the dark night that stretches across the grave and the chasm beyond the years. There would have been no herald voice confidently proclaiming "Because I live ye shall live also."

If it had not been for Jesus where would be the understanding of God's love? If it had not been for Jesus where would be the sense of sin forgiven? If it had not been for Jesus where would be the comfort for broken hearts?

The islands of the New Hebrides in the South Pacific used to be a synonym for savagery and cannibalism. It was not safe for a white man to set foot there. Today all this is changed. Schools and churches dot the hamlets, while many of the islands show a population that is gentle and law-abiding. Whence the change in these one-time Melanesian savages? Because sixty odd years ago a young minister and his wife, for love of Christ, took their lives in their hands and went to dwell among these cannibals. John G. Paton laboured long years in the midst of this savagery. His wife died while still they had made no converts. The missionary had to dig her grave himself and lay her there with the dark hostile faces looking on. "If it had not been for Jesus," he says, and the presence He vouchsafed me, I should have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave."

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If it had not been for Jesus we should have noth

ing that is most essential to our civilization. If it had not been for Jesus we should have nothing that is most precious in our lives.

If it shall not be for Jesus India, China, Africa, the islands of the sea, nor the neglected races of our own country shall know the strength of the civilization that we know, nor the comfort of the religion that we know.

It is idle to argue that some other religion or some other method suit others just as well. This is denying the very evidence that we have been considering and found true. Other religions have some truth but also vital defects. Hinduism teaches that God is near but forgets that He is holy; Mohammedanism teaches that God is great but forgets that He is tender. Buddhism teaches that this earthly life is faulty but forgets that we must therefore work the works of God before the night comes. Confucianism teaches that we live in a great framework of human relationships, but forgets that in the midst of all this we have a living and personal fellowship with the eternal God.

If, as the early historian naïvely put it, the world could not hold the record of His deeds in earthly life, it would stagger the imagination to count up all that He is responsible for in the life of today.

This is not to say that He plotted out every program associated with His name, but He gave the ideal of God, of love to man, of God realized in human lives, of humanity triumphant over all earthbound tendencies. He gave the ethic of brother

hood, the golden rule of consideration for others, the incomparable power of His own Personality.

Aside from His moral and spiritual preeminence, two things mark Him distinguished forever: (1) His confidence in the possibilities of humanity. (2) His compelling association of everything good in every age with the name of Christ.

If such is the magnitude of the Christian enterprise whence comes its power?

Is it His ethic, His teaching, or Himself? Unquestionably it comes from all of them. A mere devotion to His personality without the vision of the program of service and of brotherhood could never conquer the world. On the other hand, a program of ethical living without His dynamic of spiritual and moral power would be as impotent as the other rules of conduct which never have and never will save the world.

It is convincing to read Lecky's interpretation of how the conquests which he attributes to Christianity were accomplished. He evidently conceives them as due to a singular and unique devotion both to Christ and His teachings. Says he, "Christianity was remarkable for the empire it attained over disinterested enthusiasm. The Platonist exhorted men to imitate God; the Stoic to follow reason; the Christian to the love of Christ.

reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which through all the ages of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable

of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions; has not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists." *

Nineteen centuries of Christ and the Christian enterprise are a living testimonial to the truth of His words, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me."

* Lecky, "History of European Morals," II-9.

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