of the
faith and love of Christ, they cannot long endure the strain; they grow
weary in well-doing, perchance even they grow bitter and contemptuous,
and in a little while the tasks they have taken up fall unfinished from
their hands. "Society" takes to "slumming" for a season--just as for
another season it may take to ping-pong--but the fit does not last; and
only they keep on through the long, grey days, when neither sun nor
stars are seen, who have learnt to look on men with the eyes, and to
feel toward them with the heart, of Jesus the Man of Nazareth.

(2) "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me to
stumble, it is profitable for him that a great mill-stone should be
hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the
sea." Once more is revealed Christ's thought of the worth of the soul.
How the holy passion against him who would hurt "one of these little
ones" glows and scorches in His words! Is this a word for any of us? Is
there one among us who is tempting a brother man to dishonesty, to
drink, to lust; who is pushing some thoughtless girl down the steep and
slippery slope which ends--we know where? Then let him stop and listen,
not to me, but to Christ. Never, I think, did He speak with such solemn,
heart-shaking emphasis, and He says that it were better a man should
die, that he should die this night, die the most miserable and shameful
death, than that he should bring the blood of another's soul upon his
head. It must needs be that occasions of stumbling come, but woe, woe to
that man by whom they come, when he and the slain soul's Saviour shall
stand face to face! Oh, if there be one among us who is playing the
tempter, and doing the devil's work, let him get to his knees, and cry
with the conscience-smitten Psalmist, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness,
O God, Thou God of my salvation"; and peradventure even yet He may hear
and have mercy.

(3) Let fathers and mothers ponder what this teaching of Jesus
concerning man means for them in relation to their children. There came
into your home a while ago a little child, a gift from God, just such a
babe as Jesus Himself was in His mother's arms in Bethlehem. The child
is yours, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, and it bears your
likeness and image; but it is also God's child, and it bears His image.
What difference is the coming of the little stranger making in you? I do
not ask what difference is it making _to_ you,