s
assailed and crucified. He understood the needs of the body as well as
of the spirit. He had no contempt nor condemnation for comfort,
prosperity, or wealth, in and of themselves. He simply regarded them as
means to an end, and if nobly used to noble ends, life was the better
for whatever phases and factors of power it possessed. But He taught the
truth that here we have no continuing city; that this temporary sojourn
on earth is designed as a period in which to develop qualities rather
than to heap up accumulations. "What shall it profit a man," He well
said, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

So here was a man, living the earthly and physical life; comprehending
all the earthly and physical problems involved in relation with the
physical world; not ignoring or denying them like a mere fanatic, but
estimating them in the true scale of values,--here was a man who by his
experience and example proved that personal holiness of life is not
incompatible with personal attention to every detail of human affairs.
Jesus did not isolate Himself in a monastic cell in order to live the
life of the spirit. He practically taught that the very supreme test of
the life of the spirit is to live it in the heart of human activities.
It is in the resistless tide of daily affairs,--in the office of the
lawyer, the journalist, the physician, the architect; in the studio of
the artist, in the counting-room, the bank, the salesroom, and the
market-place, that the life of personal holiness is possible, and it is
possible to man because Jesus, taking upon Himself the human life, so
lived it in these very circumstances and under these conditions. Christ
and His all-quickening life remain in the world. They did not leave it
with His physical death. They remain as the incorruptible, the glorious,
the priceless possession of every man and woman to-day. To this divine
example of a perfect character revealed in the guise of the human life,
each individual in the world to-day can turn, as the most practical
ideal by which to shape his own life and to ultimately realize the
command, "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." If this
transcendent ideal were not a possibility for the soul, surely God would
not have given it as an idle command; but man, as a spiritual being, is
designed to live the spiritual life, and this life is that of perpetual
spiritual progress and ideal achievement; of entering into that golden
atmo