ing human is foreign to me," all the people broke into thundering applause. That is a great human sentiment and, so far, Christian. And all great human sentiments are Christian. Everything that unites man to man in brotherhood and sympathy is Christian. But it is so much easier to be a slice of a Christian than to be a whole Christian, that very few whole-hearted Christians are found. It is so much easier to be full of zeal, angry zeal against others, than it is to repress that feeling and be sincerely desirous to give and receive the pure love of human hearts. And there is no pure love till Christ has made it pure. Only as we recognize that the exalted Jesus Christ is working ever in the direction of bringing men and women upward toward the condition here set before us, can we ever believe in its attainment. But the first of the fruits of the Spirit is love — that disposition to forgive iniquity, to help and bless others, to be of use and service, to bring men out of hostility into unity, to be brothers and sisters in Christ, to repress envy and strife and hostility in speech and deed. Emphatically is this the spirit of this Lord's Supper, which we invite all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity to celebrate to-day. It is love's engagement ring worn on the finger of Christ's bride, the Church. By it we confess modestly and humbly, but sincerely, that he who won the love of Paul and John, Matthew and Thomas, Mary and Martha, has won our love too. We confess nothing but that. Conscious of living, to the extent to which they will allow us, in love and charity with our neighbors, willing to injure no one, willing to help any one, with such weak help as is in us, we take the bread and drink of the cup. It is love's request. We listen and are glad. Its simplicity is its charm. It has no dignity except the dignity of his appointment. It means nothing to the man that does not connect it with Christ, nothing to him who does not recognize that Christ has called men into Church relations and this is the sign of such relations. It has no meaning except as it represents Christ and the Church. Then its meaning is deep, indeed. It is love's dying request and where there is a loving heart, there surely ought to be love's response. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal? - Ezek. 18:25. XV THE INEQUALITIES OF LIFE If we had to give an immediate and direct answer to this question: Is not my way equal? we should be disposed to say: Decidedly not. God's ways in the treatment of men do not seem to be equal. The very opposite seems to be the case. From the beginning to the end of life there seems to be inequality, not equality. No two persons are alike either in mental endowment or in the conditions which surround their life and give to it its opportunity. The first impression that everyone must get from the presentation which society generally makes of itself is that the ways of the Lord are not equal. Consider, first of all, how men are born. Birth is something so entirely removed from the region of personal responsibility that no one of us is to be held accountable for anything belonging to it. I have positively no responsibility for being born. That responsibility is back of me in the keeping of God and his laws and in the parentage through which, as a gateway, I came into this world. And the same is true of every one of us. Yet how much depends on being well born. Some thinking men |