ay into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God is
united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God. And
one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact
that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord
calls it His peace.

This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This is the
method of God's work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to
its external result. We do not begin by finding peace with this world:
"in the world ye shall have tribulation." And most of the failure to
attain peace, and much of men's loss of faith is due to repudiation of
the divine method. We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where
human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy
yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with
the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly
demand of religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can
see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world.
Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice,
and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all
this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or
if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your
impotence. Your self-confessed business is to make a better world."

True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion does not
propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the
principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread
at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will
support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your
efforts and increase the success of your undertakings." Religion
proposes to improve the world on the condition that the principles of
religion shall be accepted as the working principles of life; on
condition, that is, that love shall be made the ground of human
association. Religion can make a better world, it can make the kingdoms
of God and of His Christ; but it can only do so on the condition that it
is whole-heartedly accepted and thoroughly applied. The proof that it
can do this is in the fact that it can and does make better individuals.
Wherever men and women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they