This is the reason why Jesus commands us to reverse the ordinary and customary relations of men. When man loves what he now hates, and hates what he now loves, he will be the opposite of what he is to-day. And if life now is made up of evils and despair, the new, changed life being the opposite of what we now have, will be all goodness and consolation. For the first time we shall know happiness; the Kingdom of Heaven will begin on earth. We will find that eternal Paradise, lost because the first men wished to learn the difference between good and evil. But for absolute love like the love of God the Father, there is neither good nor evil. Evil is overwhelmed by the good. Paradise was love, love between man and God, between man and woman. The new earthly paradise, the paradise regained, will be the love of every man for all men. Christ is He who leads Adam back to the gates of the garden, teaches him how he can enter and live there always. The descendants of Adam have not believed Christ; they have repeated His words but have not obeyed them, and because their hearts are stubborn, men are still groaning in an earthly Hell, which century by century goes on becoming more infernal. When the torments finally become unendurable, then the damned themselves will suddenly learn to hate hatred, the dying rebels in the extremity of their despair will learn to love their executioners. Then, at last, from the depths of sorrowful gloom will shine out the pure splendor of a miraculous spring. OUR FATHER The apostles asked Jesus for a prayer. He had told them to pray briefly and secretly, but they were not satisfied with any prayers recommended by the lukewarm, bookish priests of the Temple. They wanted a prayer of their own which would be like a countersign among the fraternity of Christ. Jesus on the Mount taught for the first time the Pater-noster, the only prayer which He ever taught. It is one of the simplest prayers in the world, the most profound which goes up from human homes to God, a prayer neither literary nor theological—neither bold nor servile—the most beautiful of all prayers. But though the Lord’s Prayer is simple, it is not always understood. The century-old, mechanical reiteration of tongues and lips, the formal ritual repetition, have made it almost a string of syllables from which the original meaning has been lost. Reading it over word for word to-day like a new text, which we read for the first time, it loses its ritual banality, and freshens into its first meaning. “Our Father”; for we have sprung from Thee and love Thee as sons; from Thee we shall receive no wrong. “Which art in heaven”—in that which is opposed to the earth, in the opposite sphere from matter, in spirit and in that small but eternal part of the spirit which is our soul.