traffic is being overthrown by the steady pounding of the golden rule, war must be overthrown by the same battering ram, and in your life and in mine evil must cease and good must come to the throne by our acceptance and obedience to the golden rule.

II. THE RULE OF GENTLENESS

Christ assures us that the good man is known by the way he acts under injustice. Hear his wonderful words: "I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." Christ lived by that rule. "Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." That rule when interpreted by its spirit is simply this, that we will not seek to avenge ourselves. We will not be angry because one is angry with us. We will not return evil words or deeds because we have received them. Most of us have to hang our heads in shame when we think of the retaliatory things we have said and done. But just because it is hard at first, and a commandment easily broken, we must fortify at this point. The good man must train himself to gentleness, model his treatment of those who are unjust to him after the conduct of his Master.

"It's no wonder,

Look what he had to make him great:
He had that log cabin,

He had that pine knot,

He had those rails to split;

He had that tall plug hat,

He had all those stories,

He had that Douglass debate,

He had that Civil War to win,

He had that Gettysburg speech,
He had everything

To make a man great.

And look what I have got-
Not one of those things."

Lincoln became great and gentle and patient and wise and immortal through holding himself steady and faithful against heavy odds to the law of love. In our humbler path we, too, may conquer in the same fight. The true Christian man will always be known by the way he acts when he is abused. It is so easy to fly off into anger and give way to resentment, but that is not Christlike. On the Cross he prayed for his enemies and persecutors, and said: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." May God give us victory on this hard battleground! Such victory can only be sure by a heart that opens to receive the love of God into its depths. God is love. It is the very spirit of his life. If I keep close to God and seek always to know his feeling about life, then I, too, will become love and all that stands in the way of my loving others will be overcome. God is so willing to give himself to us if we ask him. Do you remember that wonderful verse of James Russell Lowell's:

“Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest has his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;

At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking.
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer."

The June of infinite love comes to every heart that comes to God asking.

IV. THE RULE OF FORGIVENESS

Again Jesus says that a good man is to be tested by the way he forgives those who wrong him. Indeed, Christ lays tremendous stress upon this rule. With great solemnity he says: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." So our very hope of divine forgiveness for our own sins hinges on our willingness to forgive those who sin against us. Perhaps more sorrow is caused by people who count themselves among good people, through lack of a spirit of forgiveness than from almost anything else. We cannot be truly happy a single day or a single hour unless we feel that God is freely and lovingly forgiving us our many sins against him, and yet if we are treasuring up resentment against any one we know, he cannot forgive us. Sometimes a whole church is saddened and

made weak and powerless for good because of this lack of forgiveness.

I was once holding a series of evangelistic meetings in a church and the meetings had gone on for a week, and there had been little apparent result. All was formal and cold and lifeless. I seemed to be beating my soul out against a stone wall. On Sunday morning as I preached I laid the emphasis on the matter of forgiveness of injuries, and urged that we ought never to wait until one who had wronged us apologized, that it was too serious a matter for that, but we should go and frankly and lovingly assure the other person of our forgiveness and our desire to live in the spirit of love. Now, I did not know it, but there was a man in the congregation who had had a quarrel with another man in that church, and it had grown into a good deal of a feud, and though they belonged to the same church they did not speak to each other when they met, and it had split the people of the church into two factions. Well, as soon as the sermon was over the man who had been at church went straight across the fields to his neighbour with whom he had quarrelled, and when the other came to the door he burst into tears and said: "John, I cannot stand this any longer. You have felt hard toward me, and I have been bitter toward you, and I am unhappy and you don't come to church any more, and my heart is broken about it. Forgive me, John. I forgive you everything, and let us ask God to forgive us and be at peace and live as Christian men ought to live." The other man melted in a moment, and that after