and of it.
It is anything and everything except the Crucified One, as in St.
Paul's it was anything and everything except the message spoken to
those who, having ears, heard not. How do we explain it, then, from
his point of view, that this stream of people, representative of a
widespread society, is utterly indifferent to that Figure so pathetic
in its loneliness, so tragic in its appeal, and almost aggressive in
its sorrow? It is possible that not a type on the canvas is to be
interpreted as quite ignorant of the letter of the claims made for Him
who is yet the Object of the world's indifference. There is a sense in
which it is true that Christ was never better known than He is in your
day and mine. We have the well-authenticated Scriptures which testify
of Him. We are more sure that we possess many of His sayings than we
are sure that the writings known as Shakespeare's plays were written by
a man called William Shakespeare. In these Scriptures He is reported
to have said:

"Before Abraham was, I am." And in another word, that falls like a
beam of light on everything He did and said, He tells us that "the Son
of Man is come to seek and to save the lost." We have the key-word of
the Father's message to the race in the wondrous declaration that "God
so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

We have a mighty Christian literature which, if it be evolved out of a
myth, resolves itself into a miracle. We have the fact that never
before was Christ so admired, so much quoted, and so generally
applauded as He is at the opening of the twentieth century. We have
accredited thinkers who reject, as they think, all dogmatic theologies
about Christ, and yet tell us that the spirit which Christ incarnated
in His words and actions reveals a God humanity cannot improve upon.
We have, moreover, an army of men who are set apart by training, and
what they believe to be their "calling," to preach Christ by precept,
and to teach Him by a life derived, as they declare, from Him whom they
preach and teach. And amid many failures, and motives of the earth
earthy, these men do not all fail, nor do they all live by bread alone.
Was there no place in that canvas-crowd for one of those devoted men
who, ill-paid, half-starved, and overwrought, toil night and day in
that most awful work on this earth, the attempt to rescue and raise the
lapsed