eir best.

Did you ever think what a terrible irony it would have been if Jesus had
said that just to encourage us, knowing that it could never be true? We
are tolerant of the unconscious cruelty of the small boy who teases a
dog by holding a bone just out of his reach, encouraging him to jump for
it, because we know that he will finally give it to him. It is
unthinkable that Jesus could have used words of such deep significance
in such a cruelly careless way. It is God's universe in which moral
purpose has a definite standing and a more than ordinary strength.

Professor Rauschenbusch has said it in these words: "If love is the
fundamental quality of God, it must be part of the constitution of
humanity." The simple-hearted have in all ages sensed the import of this
truth, for it has to them opened up great vistas of the possibilities of
life, possibilities contemptuously discredited by the wise men of their
time who base their calculations on human weakness rather than on human
potentiality.

Your realist prides himself upon keeping his feet upon the ground. He
will go no farther than he can see, and he sees truly enough the evil
and imperfection in the world. He notes the weakness and failures of the
best intentioned, takes cognizance of the low motives that so often
dominate, and bases his conclusions on them. He spurns the idealistic
twaddle of those who, he says, are guided by their hopes rather than by
ordinary good sense, and fancies himself a practical man. He expects
little and gets that.

The Christian realist, however, sees the possibilities in the evil and
weak of mankind. He recognizes elements of virtue and courage and honor
that are waiting to be called out, sets himself to elicit them and bases
his conclusions on those very real facts. He is just as practical as the
other, but with this difference--he expects more and gets it.

When Jesus called the impulsive, eager Simon a rock, the hard-headed
must have smiled and later remarked, "I told you so," when Peter broke
under his first test; but Jesus' judgment was the truer after all. So
with Mary Magdalene and Zacheus, Jesus saw in them what they might be
and demonstrated that this is a world where the best has a chance. "Ah,
but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," is Browning's rebuke to the
merely prudent.

Have you noted how Jesus drove home His point that the possibilities for
good in the world and in men and women were of supreme importance?