SALVATION FROM SIN.
THE REMISSION OF SINS.
JESUS IN THE WORLD.
JESUS AND HIS FELLOW TOWNSMEN.
THE HEIRS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
SORROW THE PLEDGE OF JOY.
GOD'S FAMILY.
THE REWARD OF OBEDIENCE.
THE YOKE OF JESUS.
THE SALT AND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT.
THE HOPE OF THE UNIVERSE.
—and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people fromtheir sins.—Matthew i. 21.
I would help some to understand what Jesus came from the home of ourFather to be to us and do for us. Everything in the world is more orless misunderstood at first: we have to learn what it is, and come atlength to see that it must be so, that it could not be otherwise. Thenwe know it; and we never know a thing really until we know it thus.
I presume there is scarce a human being who, resolved to speak openly,would not confess to having something that plagued him, something fromwhich he would gladly be free, something rendering it impossible forhim, at the moment, to regard life as an altogether good thing. Mostmen, I presume, imagine that, free of such and such things antagonistic,life would be an unmingled satisfaction, worthy of being prolongedindefinitely. The causes of their discomfort are of all kinds, and thedegrees of it reach from simple uneasiness to a misery such as makesannihilation the highest hope of the sufferer who can persuade himselfof its possibility. Perhaps the greater part of the energy of thisworld's life goes forth in the endeavour to rid itself of discomfort.Some, to escape it, leave their natural surroundings behind them, andwith strong and continuous effort keep rising in the social scale, todiscover at every new ascent fresh trouble, as they think, awaitingthem, whereas in truth they have brought the trouble with them. Others,making haste to be rich, are slow to find out that the poverty of theirsouls, none the less that their purses are filling, will yet keep themunhappy. Some court endless change, nor know that on themselves thechange must pass that will set them free. Others expand their souls withknowledge, only to find that content will not dwell in the great housethey have built. To number the varieties of human endeavour to escapediscomfort would be to enumerate all the modes of such life as does notknow how to live. All seek the thing whose defect appears the cause oftheir misery, and is but the variable occasion of it, the cause of theshape it takes, not of the misery itself; for, when one apparent causeis removed, another at once succeeds. The real cause of his trouble is asomething the man has not perhaps recognized as even existent; in anycase he is not yet acquainted with its true nature.
However absurd the statement may appear to one who has not yetdiscovered the fact for himself, the cause of every man's discomfort isevil, moral evil—first of all, evil in himself, his own sin, his ownwrongness, his