s come has come very slowly. It has had
to fight through and in, every step of the way that it has come. Its
coming has been opposed stubbornly, maliciously, viciously every inch of
the road, as only those know who are in the thick of the struggle for
these reforms, panting for breath sometimes.

It is as though a few whiffs of wholesome life-giving air have breathed
through the cracks and crevices of the breastworks and fortifications of
evil in which all our common life seems entrenched. But the
fortifications are still there. If the sweet, wholesome breathing in
through cracks and crannies has been so blest, what would it be if the
forces of evil were clean removed from the scene, and the Christ-spirit
became the whole atmosphere breathed fully and freely without restraint,
with no bad draughts, and no counter currents to guard and fight
against?

It would seem like a strange sort of a kingdom if the present is even a
gradual coming in of the Kingdom. We would seem to be having a new,
strange sort of a Christ if the present is a sample of His sort of
reigning. For it may well be thoughtfully doubted if ever there was such
a condition of feverish unrest in all parts of the world as to-day.

It is most difficult to put your finger on a single spot of the
world-map that is not being torn and uptorn by unrest in one shape or
another. Either actual war, or constant studious preparation for war,
actually never ceases. And it is difficult to say which is the worse of
the two. The actual war reveals more terribly to our eyes and ears the
awful cost in treasure and in precious human blood spilled without
stint. The never-ceasing preparation for war seems actually to cost
more. In the immense treasure involved, and in blood too, given out, not
on an occasional battlefield, but in the continual battle of daily life
to meet the terrible drain of taxation, it costs immensely more. There
is less of the tragic for the news headings, but not a whit less, rather
much more, in the slow suffering, the pinched lives, and the awful
temptations to barter character for bread.

Then there is the continual seething unrest in the industrial world; the
protests sometimes so strange and startling against social and political
conditions; the feverish greed for gold, and land, and position; the
intense pace of all our modern life; the abandonment of home and home
ideals; the terrific attack against our young womanhood. The political
pot which