It is, and always has been, the very center of our Christian faith that the real nature and character of God come full into view in Christ, that God is in mind and heart and will revealed in the Person whom we call Christ. “The grace,” then, “of the Lord Jesus Christ,” of which we are reminded in that great word of apostolic benediction, is a true manifestation of the deepest nature and character of God Himself. The Cross is not an artificial scheme. The Cross is the eternal grace, the spontaneous, uncalculating love of God made visible and vocal in our temporal world. It is the apotheosis of the spirit of the second mile. CHAPTER II THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL I BAGS THAT WAX NOT OLD The ancient world found it very difficult to keep money even after it was got. There were almost constant wars involving the dire stripping of the unprotected country districts, and the siege and devastation of cities. In those times almost everything was fragile. It was never easy to discover any form of wealth that was surely abiding. Even if the besom of an invading army did not sweep away the labor of years, still there were other enemies to be feared. Tyrants were, always on the watch for ways of relieving wealthy men of their treasures. There were robber bands lying in wait for the traveler, and neighborhood thieves found it a small matter to break into private houses and to steal hidden money. It was no uncommon thing for men to dig in the ground and hide the talent which they had saved, or to bury the pearl of great price, or other precious jewel, in a field. If one invested his wealth in garments, then another enemy was to be feared. The moth is as old as clothes, and he got in even where the thief failed to break through. The problem of getting an indestructible money-bag was, thus, a problem of first importance. A journey to Jericho might any day reduce a man to primitive conditions, or a passing army might make him a beggar, or the visit of a thief might strip him of all his living, or the silent work of a brood of moths might ruin the savings of years. There were no perdurable purses, no nonbreakable banks, no irreducible forms of wealth. Christ evidently recognized that there was a value in money. He did not apparently demand from his follower the absolute renunciation of ownership. He expounded no new theory of economics. But he was profoundly impressed by the moral havoc and the social calamities caused by the excessive ambition for, and pursuit of, wealth. He saw how the mad rush for money and the overvaluation of it killed out the noblest fundamental traits of the soul, and, more than all else, he felt the tragedy of human lives being focused with intensity of strain and fixed with burning passion on the pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures—money-bags of all sorts waxing old and becoming incapable of holding the hoard that absorbed the whole life.