ught that it matters not if
we are happy or sorrowful, if only we are dutiful and faithful, and
brave and strong, then we should be in the atmosphere, we should be in
the great company of the Christ.

It surprises me very often when I hear good Christian people talk about
Christ's entrance into this world, Christ's coming to save this world.
They say it was so marvellous that Jesus should be willing to come down
from His throne in heaven and undertake all the strange sorrow and
distress that belonged to Him when He came to save the world from its
sins. Wonderful? There was no wonder in it; no wonder if we enter up
into the region where Jesus lives and think of life as He must have
thought of life. It is the same wonder that people feel about the
miracles of Jesus. Is it a wonder that when a divine life is among men,
nature should have a response to make to Him, and He should do things
that you and I, in our little humanity, find it impossible to do? No,
indeed, there is no wonder that God loved the world. There is no wonder
that Christ, the Son of God, at any sacrifice undertook to save the
world. The wonder would have been if God, sitting in His heaven, the
wonder would have been if Jesus, ready to come here to the earth and
seeing how it was possible to save man from sin by suffering, had not
suffered. Do you wonder at the mother, when she gives her life without a
hesitation or a cry, when she gives her life with joy, with
thankfulness, for her child, counting it her privilege? Do you wonder at
the patriot, the hero, when he rushes into the battle to do the good
deed which it is possible for him to do? No; read your own nature deeper
and you will understand your Christ. It is no wonder that He should have
died upon the cross; the wonder would have been if, with the inestimable
privilege of saving man, He had shrunk from that cross and turned away.
It sets before us that it is not the glories of suffering, it is not the
necessity of suffering, it is simply the beauty of obedience and the
fulfilment of a man's life in doing his duty and rendering the service
which it is possible for him to render to his fellow-man.

I said that a man when he did that left behind him all the thought of
the life which he was willing to live within himself, even all the
highest thought. It is not your business and mine to study whether we
shall get to heaven, even to study whether we shall be good men; it is
our business to study how we s