ave received
this spirit and manifest it, there are none to bite and devour, to
hurt and destroy; the predatory creatures have ceased their ravages,
and the world rejoices in the plenitude of life which He came to
bring.

We hail Him, then, to-day, as the Lord and Giver of life. We desire to
share with Him the unspeakable gift, and to share it, as best we may,
with all our fellow men. What we freely receive from Him, we would
freely give. What the whole world needs to-day is life, more life,
fuller life, larger life. We spend all our energies in heaping up the
means of life, and never really begin to live; our strength is wasted,
our health is broken, our intellects are impoverished, our affections
are withered, our peace is destroyed in our mad devotion to that
which is only an adjunct or appendage of life. Oh, if we could only
understand how good a thing it is to live, just to live, truly and
freely and largely and nobly, to live the life that is life indeed!

Shall we not draw to this Prince of Life and take from Him the gift
that He came to bring? Is not this the one thing needful? We are
reading and hearing much in these days of the simple life. What is it
but the life into which they are led who take the yoke of this Master
upon them and learn of Him? It is a most cheering omen that this
little book of Pastor Wagner's is falling into so many hands and
littering its ingenuous and persuasive plea before so many minds
and in so many homes. If we heed it, it must bring us back to the
simplicity of Christ. Pastor Wagner is only preaching over again the
Sermon on the Mount; it is nothing but the teaching of Jesus brought
down to this day and applied to the conditions of our complex
civilization. It is the true teaching; none of us can doubt it. And I
wish that we could all begin the new year with the earnest purpose to
put ourselves under the leadership of the Prince of Life. I know that
we should find His yoke easy and His burden light, and that there
would be rest for our souls in the paths into which He would lead us.
We should know, if we shared His life, that we were really living; and
we should know also that we wore helping others to live; that we were
doing what we could to put an end to the ravages of the destroyers and
the devourers, and to fill the earth with the abundance of peace.

Is not this, fellow men, the right way to live? Does not all that is
deepest and divinest in you consent to this way of life