What is the meaning of this state of things? We may easily be bewildered by arguments and statistics, and are certainly depressed by the news we receive,' as the Kinema of modern politics unrolls its _progress of terrors and tragedies from West to East. Have we any govern, ing idea to account for these end-Jess calamities? If only we could focus them in the light of some higher truth we might at last get on the track of some solution.
It seems to me that in the 11th chap. of Genesis we are given a philosophy of man's failure from the Jewish standpoint. The moral of the Tower of Babel is in effect' that man had grown too big for his position—too big for his shoes as we say. His ambitions were so lofty, his efforts so presumptuous, that the Almighty was afraid of his. becoming too elevated, too successful, so He smote him with confusion of tongues and thus burdened him with the certainty of divisions and wars.
Now that philosophy of human ills is impossible to readers of the New Testament where the standpoint is entirely reversed. There we are taught that God is our Father. Therefore He cannot be jealous of our progress, _cannot "plan for our weakness and con-
I have put these two passages}fusion, but desires that we may be one with each other and with Himself. The doctrine of the Atonement denies the philosophy of Babel.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.