in
life's battle, a conqueror over suffering and death, through the
completeness of his loyalty to the Great Companion. Hence the power
which makes his teaching live; hence the driving force which makes his
Gospel effective for the regeneration of society.

You see, then, what is involved. Unless we can follow him through the
point where his victory was won, all the rest will not amount to very
much. We must follow him to the _end_ if we are to be his disciples.
It is said of his first followers that when they came to this last lap
of the journey, when the road before them took that critical turn which
led through the Garden of Gethsemane, and became a Via Dolorosa, they
all forsook him and fled. Do not some of our modernized versions of
Christianity show a similar weakness, a similar reluctance to grasp the
nettle, a similar tendency to stop short in their following of Christ
precisely at the critical point? They forsake him and flee--flee for
their lives!--This it is that makes simple Christianity so difficult;
so difficult but so splendid, so infinitely worth achievement.

There was a phase in the ministry of Jesus, a comparatively untroubled
one, when he went about among men in a temper of radiant optimism,
declaring his confidence in the Divine Companion, a confidence so
complete that all anxiety for the morrow was banished and the soul
freed for a life of the utmost generosity and beneficence. "Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Nothing
too bad to be incurable; nothing too good to be hoped for; nothing too
high to be attempted; nothing so precious that we cannot afford to give
it away. Yes, even that! For there is that within the hero which is
so rich that he can afford to give his very life away, and be none the
poorer, but the richer; a strange discovery, made by many a brave lad
during the recent war, as he prepared himself to "go over the top," and
thought of his mother or of his beloved.

Then came another phase, such as we too must meet sooner or later, when
his mission had to be fulfilled not by saying these things, not by
saying anything, but by doing and bearing up to the limit of courage
and endurance. The silence of Jesus in the presence of Pilate is the
silence of one for whom the day of speech is over and the day of battle
begun, the ultimatum delivered, and the trumpet sounding the attack.
Where are his followers now? They have all run away, as verbal
Ch