It is remarkable that Christ is never said to have called a woman to follow him as he called the disciples; and quite as remarkable that, so far as the evidence goes, no woman ever spoke a word against him, while many women were last at the cross, and earliest at the sepulchre. It seems as though he had assumed that the womanly side of human nature would not require any calling; that the heart of woman would instinctively welcome him as the solution of all difficulties, the sum of all charms, the sovereign of frail and needy creatures who have immense capacity of suffering, but little satisfaction in the results of mere logic. Christ was emphatically, uniquely, the seed of the woman. What woman could reject her own son? Does not every woman look with intensely hopeful love upon the son of her womb? He will be her comfort, her song, her saviour; she no longer lives but in him and for him; through him she interprets the future, and for his sake takes a kinder view of all mankind. Christ was born to every woman. Men required to be called, women only to be attracted. Women had but to see him in order to claim him as the fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely ; to recognize him as the tenderest and wisest friend of womanhood. They needed no call. The dew waits for no voice to call it to the sun. Few women ever go to Christ through the medium of mere doctrine. They live beyond the cold propositional region. The dew finds its way up to the sun without knowing anything of the laws of motion or the mysteries of light, and womanly hearts go up to Christ often knowing little of objective theology, yet wise because inspired and

guided by the love which is the elect interpreter of God. God is love, and by her superior capacity of love woman is so much nearer God than man can ever be. It is hardly to be wondered at that millions of Christians even now feel that heaven itself requires the distinctive presence of the womanly element, and express the feeling by addressing Mary as the mother of God. If Protestantism were less technical and more human, it would hesitate before condemning the feeling which dictates this startling appellation. The fact may be that God is more human than traditional doctrinism has yet dared to conceive. We think of humanity too exclusively by the flesh. It is to be remembered that the body is the lesser portion of man, and that we speak rightly of the human mind as well as the human body. It is on the mind side that we approach God, through the mind side that we communicate with God, and on the mind side that we resemble God. In this sense God is more human, or man more divine, than has yet been authenticated by the councils of Christendom. God is not declared to be power, but he is declared to be love; whoever, therefore, can love most is most like God. It is not to the point to argue that men excel women in pure intellectual force; even allowing as a conceit what we cannot concede as a fact, it amounts to nothing in this case. A lion is stronger, an eagle swifter, than man, yet it is not to be inferred that they are nearer God than man is; but God is love, and nearness to him in soul-quality is a question of love. Nor is it to the point that women have fallen into great depths of sin; the greater the depth the greater the nature. If God himself could

sin, all other sinners would be forgotten in the darkness of the stupendous apostasy.

Christ's tender recognition of little children was part of his call. Little children are included in the kingdom of heaven; and in this particular, Christ's idea of the Church, which must be the true idea, is totally different from current ecclesiastical notions. It is now taught that children have to be converted; but Christ taught that men were to become converted, and to be like little children - a direct inversion of narrow theological churchmanship. It is declared that children are born corrupt, but where is Christ's authority for saying so? Christ said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Whatever was of the nature of that kingdom must go to Christ. As the founder of a permanent monarchy, Christ knew the value of young life. When the blood is fresh the enthusiasm is fervid; and what is a monarch if he be not supported by the passionate love of the national heart? Passive allegiance is a pompous circumlocution which signifies death.

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CHAPTER VIII.

CHRIST REJECTING MEN.

WHEN

WHEN Christ said he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, there must have been a strong ironical tone in his pronunciation of the word "righteous." Most truly we cannot infer from his reported words who the righteous were, if there were such. Not the Pharisees certainly, as was most impressively shown upon one memorable occasion. A Pharisee had invited Christ to dinner, and when the guests were ranged in order Christ openly said, "Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness; ye fools, did not he that made that which is without, make that which is within also?" This sentence excludes the Pharisees from the category of "the righteous." And the Scribes were associated with them, for on the same occasion, addressing them jointly, he said-"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them." This denunciation, which in modern days and Western lands would be deemed an unpardonable abuse of hospitality, could not fail to make a deep impression upon the minds of the guests; this was clear from a singular

incident. One of the lawyers brought the matter to an issue: "Master," said he, "thus speaking thou reproachest us also." The answer was probably much clearer and fuller than the lawyer expected; the spirit of judgment asserted itself in the boldest manner in Jesus Christ: "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. . Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." This exasperating talk produced a most singular effect upon the guests. Probably they had never come so decidedly in contact with this new spirit of judgment before, and as they were all together at the time they felt the stimulus of association, and being stung by the rebukes of an uncourteous stranger, "they began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him." There is a good deal underlying all this. They might think that they had caught Christ at a disadvantage. Was he inflamed with wine? How could he who came to call men to himself encounter some of the leading classes of society with language so repulsive? They could not comprehend this new spirit of judgment which had come to hold its assize among men, and in their ignorance they sought to drive judgment into indiscrimination, and thus deprive it of the moral element. They found nothing on the