Christianity is an announcement of God's expectations of great things from man under conditions of faith, in Christ. You can take any of the eulogies on man, that poets have written, such as Shakespeare's; "What a piece of work man! How nobl¢ in reason! How infinite in faculty!" Christianity does not laugh tat that. It agrees with it. That is why Christ died, that man's sin might be put away, and man's faculties freed from the impoverishments of sin. Again, when the Lord was here, He spent His time in helping men and women to removd mountains. He came full of expectations, and showed everyone He met, that He had the greatest expectations of him or her. The woman "who was a sinner" did not discourage Him. He saw the gold in her, "us Hie sees it in us all. He moved the mountain of her sin. And the 12 men, whom He made His apostles. There is hardly a governing body of any church of to-day, that would have accepted them for its ministry. They wouldn't have been considered to have had jo good enough education. It is all University men'' who are wanted now, even in many businesses. They want university men to sell oil and cotton. But He expected a lot from them, and got it. They turned the world upside down," as I fear, we tre not doing. Their faith shifted whole ranges of mountains. Old paganisms got a shock from which they never recovered. Old superstitions were swept away by the preaching of the cross. There had been a time when Peter would have smiled if anyone had told him that he would be one of the world's famous preachers. ut the unexpected happened. He once got 3,000 converts by one sermon. That stands as the record even after all this lapse of time, and it looks as it were going to remain the record. Things will have to change very much, if it is to be broken.
Jesus expected great things of men. That is the teaching. Now, let us see that from the human as well as from the divine point of view, He had every might to expect a great deal. This is an argument not often used, but. which T think is valid. I refer to the intellectual and cultural achievements of mankind. What mountains man's mind has removed! What wmspeakably difficult problems man has solved! And often without knowing what an astounding thing he has done. There are languages. Civilized man studies them, elaborates their rules, Aristotle discovered grammar. But the languages were produced unconsciously with all their complications of grammar by wild peoples. There had, of course, to be languages before clever men could study and analyse them. A race, that could create a language
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.