he Heaven of Jesus is a strangely ordered Kingdom;
for in it beggars are comforted for apparently no other reason than
that they need comfort; the doers of forgotten kindnesses are crowned
with sudden splendours of divine approval while the lords of genius and
the makers of empire are forgotten; and the very anthems of the blessed
are hushed into silent wondering and joy when solitary penitents turn
homewards from the roads of sin! But it is not stranger than that
kingdom in which Jesus lived habitually, the kingdom He created round
Him in His earthly life. In that kingdom also love was lord, and she
who anointed the tired feet of the Master against His burial was
promised everlasting remembrance, and she who out of her penury gave
her mite to the poor was praised as having done more than all the rich,
who from their abundance distributed careless and unmissed
benefactions. In all that Jesus says and does the same sequence of
thought runs clear, the same master principle rules the various result.
Life is a unity either here or hereafter, and love is, and must
evermore remain, the one temper that gives significance to life.

THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE

_THE WELL_

_When Galilee took morning's flame
Thro' fields of flowers the Master came.
He stopped before a cottage door,
And took from humble hands the store
Of crumbs that from the table fell,
And water from the living well.
He smiled, and with a great content
Upon the road of flowers went._

_Foredoomed upon the road of shame
With bleeding feet the Master came,
And found the cottage door again.
"No wine have we to ease Thy pain,
But only water in a cup."
The Master slowly drank it up.
"Thy kindness turns it into wine,"
He said, "and makes the gift divine."_

_Upon a day the Master trod
The road of stars that leads to God,
All tasks for men accomplished.
"They gave Me hate," He softly said,
"But Love in larger measure gave,
And therefore was I strong to save.
I had not reached the Cross that day
But for the Well beside the way."_

VIII

THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE

If these things be true, if the whole tradition of Jesus is an
exposition of love as the law of life, the deduction is entirely
simple, and as logical as it is simple. That deduction has been
already stated. It is that Christianity is a method of life by which
men and women are taught and inspired to love as Jesus loved, and to