Then again, in wondering vhether Christ could and_can love all men, we attribute to Him some of the worst features of human nature. We look enti for ax-elusiveness. We ave like not Leo Hunter, who told Mr. Pickwick that his wif@s "ambition was to have no other acquaintances than men of talent." We pick and choose. But Jesus got on with all. He found something good in_ all. His is the greatest mind earth has known. But He had none of the odious pride that so often disfigures intellectual people. Some can only do with "Varsity" men. There was no cant and snobbery like that in Him. His friends were plain people, fishermen and the like. Hei loves us all. Ho came to save us and bring us to God; He "knew what-is in man," but that deepened His love for all kinds of people. When Mr. Taft was governor of the Philipines he called the Filipinos his "brown brothers' and immediately, I remember, there was a rhyme: went round the coast; "They may be brothers of big Bill Taft, But they ain't no brothers of mind."
Jesus didn't feel like that at all. On the contrary, Since the children are sharers of flesh and blood he in like manner partook of the same."' We like men of the same position, race, education and type; and so society is divided into cliques. He was of no shane: He partook of the flesh of all.
Then again, we talk too much today about "Christianity" as a kind of influence on public life; we discuss Christianity and the world," "Christianity in relation to art, and politics" and so on. He didn't. That way of ours robs it of its personal intensity, tenderness and charm. It isn't a scheme of economics or of democracy or any other windy generality. It is the pouring out of the love of God in flood towards each one of us. He seeks and saves the lost; "there is joy in the presence of the angela of God over one sinner that, repenteth He loves man as he is, worth dying for. Like the two great men I have quoted He "in his large-hearted way loves the human nature in us all."
There is no time to dwell on the end of the passage. It is enough to take it to mean the grand fact, that being the embodiment of the very love of the Eternal, He can deliver all who trust Him from every kind of bondage to fear, to mind, to convention, to sin and death themselves.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.