Conventional standards are the common standards of the majority; but, although they are perhaps more serviceable than any others in the achievement of commonplace success, they are invariably inadequate on a really high and simple plane of human endeavor. It is rare to find an active man engaged in worldly business who recognizes the laws of simple unselfishness and truth as having any practical existence in human affairs; but it is still more rare to find such a man understanding the true relation between essential goodness and the conventional principles of morality. There are times when those who act from higher standards must appear to contradict entirely all conventional modes of life, but they do not necessarily oppose such conventions, for through a courageous adherence to the spirit of the law they eventually bring new life to its letter. The true man of the world is he who can express his essential goodness and truth in wise and appropriate ways, and in terms which must be, in the long run, intelligible to all kinds of men. When Jesus Christ healed a man on the Sabbath day, He not only ignored the conventional standards of His nation, but He appeared to disobey one of the fundamental commandments of the law. The Pharisees, and all the people about Him who stood well in the eyes of the world, were angrily indignant. It is not difficult to imagine, after it was all over, a kind and conventional soul coming to the Lord and asking Him why He had not waited until the next day before carrying out His intention;--He would not have had to wait long, and the displeasure of the Pharisees would have been avoided. "Would it not have been more charitable to respect the religious scruples of the Jews? Is it not wrong to fly needlessly in the face of respectable public opinion? Was it not unwise needlessly to break the letter of the commandment, even while keeping its spirit?" Some doubting soul, who wanted to believe in the goodness of the Lord and the purity of His motive, might well have put all these questions to Him with a sincere and conscientious desire to serve. And yet this doubter, with all his conscientious kindness, would have been blind and stupid. For only the self-righteous or the morally stupid could fail to understand that, in healing a sick man on the Sabbath day, our Lord was establishing a new precedent of a truer and deeper obedience for all mankind. The Pharisees were convinced of their own goodness; it would not have occurred to them as possible that they were narrow, provincial, and self-righteous. They would not have admitted for an instant the possibility of any circumstances under which it might be right to perform a radical cure on the Sabbath day; and they persuaded themselves that they were "doing God service" when they subjected to an ignominious execution the man who had so roused all their personal and selfish antagonism. The Pharisees were hopelessly unable to understand Him, but