Generation after generation have raised the Cross anew, and in the crucifying of the dumb multitudes have crucified Him. Along with His own He fought with wild beasts, went through the flames, and suffered many bloody and diverse persecutions, and He was with His people now. He confronted to-day the mighty of the earth as He did that blinded priesthood of old, and He declared that there is only one way of conquering, and that by love; that gaining the whole world was a miserable bargain if in exchange a man parted with truth and righteousness and purity--those things that constitute the soul's very breath. But self-interest answered with cold disdain: "What sickly sentimentalist is this? Let Him be crucified." He faced to-day the lust of conquest, and declared that the conquering of men's bodies was nothing; that the only way of attaining power was to conquer men's hearts and minds and wills, thus clasping them to us with hooks of steel; that the will of God for His children was that they should love their enemies and not pour upon them the vials of wrath, trampling them under foot; but the arrogance of man answered with the hoarse cry, "Crucify." And that humanity which named His name was driven once more to the holocaust of war--ten millions of men consigned to the hell of reeking trenches. In the midst of the world the Cross stands as never before, bearing its awful woe. In the seeing of the whole world the Eternal Love is crucified. It was its shadow that fell on her whose lips trembled as she sat on the mort-safe over against the locked and barred door of the House of God. *** The most wonderful thing in history is that from a peasant done shamefully to death in a remote corner of the Eastern world there should flow through the ages such an inexplicable power. And yet there must be some explanation of it. Why should a passion for righteousness be evoked in the human heart by the fact that a Galilean was crucified by a petty Roman official? There can be no explanation but this--that that deed of shame revealed to men the hatefulness of the power which wrought so evil a deed. That power was self-interest--selfishness. The eyes of men turned to Jesus Christ, and they saw one holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin, whose journeying was the journeys of healing among the sons of men, whose words were words of blessedness, declaring that God loved and pardoned His children, and yet men reviled, scorned, scourged and at last crucified Him. The power that moved men to this dread crime was sin, and thus the word sin became a word of horror. (For the selfishness that crucified was only one fruit of sin.) Out of that realisation of the horror of sin there sprang an ethical passion--a passion which in the heart and in the world waged ceaseless war on selfishness and all the devices of evil. Thus humanity was lifted out of the mire. They girded themselves to fight that dread and hateful power which crucified the Holy One.