he eyes,
no longer blinded by the exhalations of evil passions, saw the ideal of
purity arise before their eyes, and they turned to climb towards the
clearer vision. Through the revelation of purity in the face of Jesus
Christ and the realisation of the awfulness of that power which crowned
that purity with thorns, there came to humanity the dawning of
deliverance from sin--a deliverance still going on to its fruition.

***

History is for ever repeating itself, and to-day the process of
humanity's deliverance from evil will gather momentum and advance a
long way towards the final triumph. For just as men only realised the
hatefulness of sin when they saw it laid upon Jesus Christ, so will it
be also to-day. A generation that had lost the sense of sin beholds
sin laid upon millions of men, working woe unspeakable, and, beholding,
learns anew what sin is and the hatefulness of it. For these millions
of men grappling with death, what are they but humanity's sin-bearers.
On them is laid the burden of the sins of this generation. The
selfishness, greed, ambition, lust--all the passions which sweep men to
wars of conquest--have poured the vials of misery on their heads. The
son of the widow sitting on the mort-safe, who now lies in a nameless
grave, he bore it. The bearing of it killed him.

And as humanity will realise its horror, the word sin will once more
burn red before men's eyes, and there will arise that passion for
righteousness which will lay sin low even as the dust. There will ring
round the world the compelling cry that this power of hell must not for
ever hold humanity in its grip--that ruthless ambition, militarism,
despotism must be made to cease from the face of the earth. Once more
the shadow of the Cross will mean salvation to men.

***

There was another power also that stirred the world under the shadow of
the Cross, and that was the power of self-sacrifice. There came to men
an overwhelming realisation that at the heart of the universe was the
Spirit of self-sacrifice, and that the Cross was but the expression of
it. They realised that the greatest thing a man can do with his life
is to lay it down. And as men realise to-day that the Cross still
abides in the heart of God, so that in all their affliction He is
afflicted, there comes to them the feeling that the one way of coming
nearest to His heart is the way of self-sacrifice.

Under the shadow of the Cross now lifted up, a nation t