fect." Our Lord is not, in these words, enunciating a rule
of perfection for a few saintly souls. He is laying down the law, the
standard of all human lives. To fall short of this, is to fall short of
what it means to be a man.

The proof that this is so, is to be found in our own consciousness,
bearing its witness to these words of Jesus Christ. The one most
constant feature in human life is its restlessness, the feeling of
dissatisfaction which broods over its best achievements, the attainment
of all its desires. That very restlessness and dissatisfaction is the
witness to the dignity of our nature, the grandeur of our destiny. We
were made for God, for the attainment of eternal life through union with
Him. No being who was merely finite, could be conscious of its finitude.

Spite of yourselves ye witness this,
Who blindly self or sense adore.
Else, wherefore, leaving your true bliss,
Still restless, ask ye more?

"Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart knoweth no rest, till it
find rest in Thee."

Then look at the other picture. Side by side with the glory of our
calling, place the shame and the misery of what we are. My desires, my
passions are ever at war with the true self, and too often overcome it.
"I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin and death which is in my
members." And so there goes up the bitter cry, "Wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Now the Cross of Jesus Christ is the Divine answer to this great and
exceeding bitter cry of our suffering, struggling, sinful humanity. For
the Cross is not merely an altar, but a battlefield, by far the greatest
battlefield in all human history. That was the crisis of the conflict
between good and evil which gives endless interest to the most
insignificant human life, which is the source of the pathos and the
tragedy, the degradation and the glory, of the long history of our race.
It is the human struggle which we watch upon the Cross: the human victory
there won which we acclaim with endless joy and exultation. Man faced
the fiercest assault of the foe, and man conquered.

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,