efulness, for service, here and now, for still higher growth and
unfoldment, whereby the soul might be grown to a sufficient degree that
it would be worth the saving. And this is one of the great facts that is
now being recognised and preached by the forward-looking men and women
in our churches and by many equally religious outside of our churches.

And so all aspiring, all thinking, forward-looking men and women of our
day are not interested any more in theories about, explanations of, or
dogmas about Jesus. They are being won and enthralled by the wonderful
personality and life of Jesus. They are being gripped by the power of
his teachings. They do not want theories about God--they want God--and
God is what Jesus brought--God as the moving, the predominating, the
all-embracing force in the individual life. But he who finds the Kingdom
of God, whose life becomes subject to the Divine rule and life within,
realises at once also his true relations with the whole--with his
neighbour, his fellow-men. He realises that his neighbour is not merely
the man next door, the man around the corner, or even the man in the
next town or city; but that his neighbour _is every man and every woman
in the world_--because all children of the same infinite Father, all
bound in the same direction, but over many different roads.

The man who has come under the influence and the domination of the
Divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as
the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good--that is,
any essential good--at the expense of the good of all; but rather that
his interests, his Welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all
others are identical. God's rule, the Divine rule, becomes for him,
therefore, the fundamental rule in the business world, the dominating
rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and
relations of nations.

Jesus did not look with much favour upon outward form, ceremony, or with
much favour upon formulated, or formal religion; and he somehow or other
seemed to avoid the company of those who did. We find him almost
continually down among the people, the poor, the needy, the outcast, the
sinner--wherever he could be of service to the Father, that is, wherever
he could be of service to the Father's children. According to the
accounts he was not always as careful in regard to those with whom he
associated as the more respectable ones, the more respecta