s within us. We seem so trivial, so foolish,
so childish, that we hardly dare sometimes to believe that we are
truly God. It seems impossible for us in our modern life, with all the
follies in which we spend ourselves, with all the childish ambitions
and terrors with which we amuse or frighten ourselves. This little
modern life seems so petty and so vulgar that we scarcely dare to
believe ourselves divine. We speak of the old heroic days, and think
that if we had lived then, we too should have been heroic, as the
heroes and martyrs and saints of earlier times. But in truth humanity
is just as divine to-day, as it ever was in the past. And if the
divine were manifested in us as it was in the great ones of the past,
we should be heroic as they were; it is not circumstances that make
the difference, but only that the God within us is more in the stage
of childhood than in those mighty ones of the past, in which He had
risen to the stature of divine manhood. And when we think of the
Masters and realise that They are; still more, perhaps, when in some
happy moment we catch a glimpse of such divine Men, or feel Their
presence closer than that of a human friend, ah! then it is that the
inspiration which flows from Them, as from a ceaseless source,
encourages and vivifies the life within. For we realise that it was
not so very, very long ago that They were as we are, plunged down in
the trivialities of earth; that They have climbed above them by the
unfolding of the God within. And what They have done, you and I may
also do. They are a constant inspiration and encouragement for
humanity. They are men, and only God as we are God; the only
difference being that They have God more manifest in Them than He is
in us. They also in Their day were weak and foolish; They also strove
and struggled, as we strive and struggle now; They also failed, as we
are failing now; They also blundered, as we are blundering now; and
They have risen above it all, strength after strength revealed in
Them, wisdom and power and love growing ever more and more divine. And
what They have done, you and I can do. For They are truly but the
first fruits of humanity, the promise of the harvest, and not
something strange, miraculous, and far away. The Christian clings to
the manhood of Jesus for the reason that as "He hath suffered, being
tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted." And it is a
true instinct, a wise faith, for it is by coming into touch