knew it as He knew His
own face, and He saw the heart of pain which had made it so. He was no
schoolboy shouting himself hoarse in a thoughtless enthusiasm which had
never tested its strength against the graver difficulties of life. He
saw it all, felt it all, understood it all, yet He lived and died in a
great, sweet, serene hope for the race. You cannot find one hateful,
cynical or despairing word falling from His lips.

He stood once where the shadow of the Cross was already drawing a black
line across His path. He had twelve disciples to whom for the past two
years He had given the best part of His time, His thought and His love.
One of them had already betrayed Him, bargaining away his poor measure
of loyalty for thirty pieces of silver. In the next hour another
disciple would deny Him three times over with an oath. Another would
doubt Him straight in the face of all those pledges of genuineness
which they had received at first hand. And when the hour of trial
struck His disciples would all show themselves cowards and quitters.

Even so, this young man did not despair. "Be of good cheer," He cried.
"I have overcome the world." He was speaking in anticipation, but He
was so sure of it that He used the past tense as of a thing
accomplished. "I have overcome the world." He had kindled a fire
which would never go out. He had lodged a bit of yeast in the heart of
the race which would finally leaven the whole lump. He had saturated a
few men with His ideas and spirit, and they would set in motion a
process which one day would cause every knee to bow before Him and
every tongue to confess that He is Lord.

He was to change the history of the world--how did He go about it? In
the first place He changed men's thoughts about God. Men are
influenced by their environment--they are transformed by the renewing
of their minds. They are moulded by the thoughts they think and the
desires they cherish. As a man thinketh in his heart touching the
things that matter, so he becomes.

This is true as regards all our prevailing habits of mind, but the
potency of right thought is to be found at its best when we come to a
man's thought of God. How shall we think about ultimate reality? What
is behind all these changing, passing phenomena? Who is back of it
all? Is anybody? If so, is he wise or blind? Is he good or evil or
morally indifferent? Does he mean anything by it all, or is he only an
unreasoning, purpos