lsmere's
thought, indeed, knew nothing of a perfect man, as it knew nothing of an
incarnate God; he shrank from nothing that he believed true; but every
limitation, every reserve he allowed himself, did but make the whole
more poignantly real, and the claim of Jesus more penetrating.

'The world has grown since Jesus preached in Galilee and Judaea. We
cannot learn the _whole_ of God's lesson from him now--nay, we could not
then! But all that is most essential to man--all that saves the soul,
all that purifies the heart--that he has still for you and me, as he
had it for the men and women of his own time.'

Then he came to the last scenes. His voice sank a little; his notes
dropped from his hand; and the silence grew oppressive. The dramatic
force, the tender passionate insight, the fearless modernness with which
the story was told, made it almost unbearable. Those listening saw the
trial, the streets of Jerusalem, that desolate place outside the
northern gate; they were spectators of the torture, they heard the last
cry. No one present had ever so seen, so heard before. Rose had hidden
her face. Flaxman for the first time forgot to watch the audience; the
men had forgotten each other; and for the first time that night, in many
a cold embittered heart, there was born that love of the Son of Man
which Nathaniel felt, and John, and Mary of Bethany, and which has in it
now, as then, the promise of the future.

'"_He laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock, and he
rolled a stone against the door of the tomb._" The ashes of Jesus of
Nazareth mingled with the earth of Palestine--

'"Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down."'

He stopped. The melancholy cadence of the verse died away. Then a gleam
broke over the pale exhausted face--a gleam of extraordinary sweetness.

'And in the days and weeks that followed the devout and passionate fancy
of a few mourning Galileans begat the exquisite fable of the
Resurrection. How natural--and amid all its falseness--how true, is that
naive and contradictory story! The rapidity with which it spread is a
measure of many things. It is, above all, a measure of the greatness of
Jesus, of the force with which he had drawn to himself the hearts and
imaginations of men....

'And now, my friends, what of all this? If these things I have been
saying to you are true, what is the upshot o