not be content. Consider all the dead and withered grass for which no way of escape was found! So blighting conditions lie across the lives of millions of folk today alike in heathendom and Christendom. Here and there some few break through to liberty. But the crushed multitudes-how can a disciple of Jesus think of them with equanimity? Men are not disembodied spirits. They are tremendously moved and molded by the environment in which they live. No one can hope to save the world without saving men; but neither can one hope to save men without saving the world. The two involve each other; they are one. The Church's best gift to mankind is redeemed personality; but redeemed personality's best gift to mankind is a better world, more fit to be a home for the family of God. He who is a partisan for either of these avenues of service against the other is a fair target for that newly discovered saying of our Lord: "Thou hearest with one ear, but the other thou hast closed."

Too long have many Christians been content with the ideal of negative unworldliness. The true antidote for worldliness is not unworldliness alone, but better-worldliness. Worldliness says, Indulge as you will in drink; unworldliness says, Be a teetotaler; better-worldliness says, The whole accursed liquor traffic can be stopped. Worldliness says, Salacious drama is a permissible delight; unworldliness says, The theater is utterly taboo; better-worldliness says, The recreation of the people must be redeemed to decency and worth. Worldliness says, Play politics according to the current rules of the game; unworldliness says, Eschew politics altogether; better-worldliness says, The State can be as Christian as a man and Christian men must make it so. Worldliness says, Business is a selfish conflict for revenue only; unworldliness says, Seek not to be rich; better-worldliness says, Business is an indispensable service to mankind, and if it be organized and fairly run for man's sake and not for money only, it can be made as Christian as a church. Worldliness says, When war comes, fight; unworldliness says, No Christian must ever fight at all; better-worldliness says, International anarchy is a relic of barbarism and if Christian folk will seriously set themselves to organize the good will of the world, it can be stopped. In a word, worldliness says, Let the world be; unworldliness says, Come out from the world; better-worldliness says, In God's name, save the world!

The great days of the Church come when that full scope of service is accepted as the Christian task. When Carey gives the Bible in translation to millions of people; when Livingstone throws wide the doorways of a new continent to civilization; when Paton lays the foundation of a new social order in the Hebrides; when Hamlin drives the opening wedge of Christian civilization into Constantinople-then come the great days of the Church. When of William Wilberforce's fight against the slave traffic it can be said: "The clergy to a man are favorable to the cause" and "the people have taken up the matter in the view of duty and religion, and do not inquire what any man or set of men think of it," then come great days to the Church. For great days never can come to the Church, except as she shares the spirit of her Lord, and her Lord's demand was not simply new men in an old world but a new world to house new men.

CHAPTER III

The Strong and the Weak

DAILY READINGS

We are to consider this week the problem created by human inequality. Where some are by nature and privilege more highly endowed than others, Christianity at once insists on the use of the superior strength in service. In our daily readings we shall endeavor to see the dangers associated with the possession of superior strength, if this Christian principle is not observed.

Third Week, First Day

Paul from his prison writes to his friends at Philippi as follows:

But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have revived your thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.-Phil. 4:10-13.

I

One half of that passage is not at all surprising. I know how to be abased; I know how to be hungry; I know how to be in want-how familiar that testimony is, from those who have learned from Christ faith, steadiness, and overcoming power in times of hardship! But the other half of the passage is decidedly unusual. "I know how to abound"; Paul writes as though that were a difficult affair. "I know how to be filled," he says, "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me." Paul evidently feels that dealing with abundance is quite as difficult as dealing with abasement. It is as though

he said: I am now an old man. In my experience I have swept the gamut of human life. I have experienced proud eminence and contemptuous ostracism. I have had culture, education, money; and I have been tossed about the earth, a poor tentmaker, apostle of a persecuted faith. At the end I bear witness that Jesus Christ enables a man to stand anything that can happen to him. I could even stand success. I know how to abound.

How often have we so considered our privileges as a difficult problem to be spiritually mastered?

O most liberal Distributer of Thy gifts, who givest us all kinds of good things to use, grant to us Thy grace, that we misuse not these Thy gracious gifts given to our use and profit. Grant us to be conversant amongst Thy gifts, soberly, purely, temperately, holily, because Thou art such a one; sɔ shall not we turn that to the poison of our souls, which Thou hast given for the medicine of our bodies, but using Thy benefits thankfully, we shall find them profitable both to soul and body. Amen. "Christian Prayers," 1566.

Third Week, Second Day

Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day: and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table; yea, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom: and the rich man also died, and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things: but now here he is comforted, and thou art in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that they that would pass from hence to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from thence to us.-Luke 16:19-26.

The minds of the Pharisees who heard Jesus were already

furnished with the popular, lurid picture of future punishment which Jesus uses here. What is new to them is not the background of flaming condemnation, but the character of the person who is condemned. Jesus takes a familiar setting and puts into it an unfamiliar personnel. For what the Master says is this: The condemned character is a man who having superior privileges proves himself unfit to have them. How much we need that lesson! In our eyes, success is in itself an estate most to be desired; we forget that success is a fine art, of all arts most difficult to handle. We clamor for power -fortune, wealth, prestige. How can I succeed? is our question. We do not ask, Am I fit to succeed? Yet the second question is the more important. It is one thing to be in a happy and fortunate estate; it is another to be fit to be there. It is one thing to be well fed; it is another to be worth feeding. It is one thing, like Dives, to have money and influence and social position, and it is another to be the kind of man who is fit to have them. And the Master insists that fitness to possess any privilege can be proved only by service to the unprivileged. There is no hope for Dives until he learns to pray like this:

Blessed Lord, who for our sakes wast content to bear sorrow and want and death; Grant unto us such a measure of Thy Spirit that we may follow Thee in all self-denial and tenderness of soul. Help us by Thy great love, to succour the afflicted, to relieve the needy and destitute, to share the burdens of the heavy-laden, and ever to see Thee in all that are poor and desolate. Amen.-Bishop Westcott (1825-1901). Third Week, Third Day

And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he reasoned within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.-Luke 12: 16-21.