y
in the midst of this vale of tears. In our busy civilisation the memory
of the free life of Galilee has been like perfume from another world,
like the "dew of Hermon," which has kept drought and grossness from
entirely invading the fields of God.

_A GOSPEL FOR THE POOR_

Jesus very soon understood that the official world of his time would by
no means lend its support to his kingdom. He took his resolution with
extreme daring. Leaving the world, with its hard heart and narrow
prejudices, on one side, he turned towards the simple. A vast
rearrangement of classes was to take place. The Kingdom of God was made
for children, and those like them; for the world's outcasts, victims of
that social arrogance which repulses the good but humble man; for
heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and the pagans of Tyre
and Sidon. That the reign of the poor is at hand was the doctrine of
Jesus. This exaggerated taste for poverty could not last very long, but
although it quickly passed, poverty remained an ideal from which true
descendants of Jesus were never afterwards separated.

Like all great men, Jesus was fond of common folk, and felt at his ease
with them. He particularly esteemed all those whom orthodox Judaism
disdained. Love of the people, pity for their powerlessness, the feeling
of the democratic leader who has the spirit of the multitude quick
within him, reveal themselves at every instant in his acts and sayings.
He had no external affection, and made no display of austerity. He did
not shun pleasure; but went willingly to marriage feasts. His gentle
gaiety found constant expression in amiable pleasantries. Thus he
journeyed through Galilee in the midst of continual festivities. When he
entered a house, it was considered a joy and a blessing. Children and
women adored him. The children, indeed, were like a young guard about
him, for the inauguration of his innocent kingship, and gave him little
ovations. It was childhood, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its
simple bewilderment of joy, that took possession of the earth.

How long did this intoxication last? We cannot tell. But whether it
filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has
lived upon it ever since. Happy he to whom it has been granted to behold
with his own eyes this divine blossoming, and to share, if but for a
day, the incomparable illusion! But yet more happy, Jesus would tell us,
shall he be who, by the uprightn