It is painful to contemplate such a spectacle, and to recall it to you; but it is necessary we should realize what it means, if we are to learn the lesson which is the most imperative for us at this moment, and if we are to take home to our minds the full blessing of the promise of Whit Sunday. It is encouraging to bear in mind that a similar spectacle and crisis existed in the world at the time when our Lord spoke the words of the text. The Roman Empire, although, like the German nation, it rendered great services to mankind, was in His day developing into a terrible despotism, and its rulers were becoming the incarnation of a ruthless and unscrupulous force. The age of the twelve Cæsars, some of whom were monsters of violence and vice, was commencing; and at that moment there appeared another influence, that of the twelve Apostles, who proclaimed in the world the authority and the inspiration of another King, their Lord and Master, who taught the blessedness of another ideal--the ideal of poverty of spirit, of mourning, of meekness, of mercy, of purity, and of peacemaking. The two ideals struggled side by side for three centuries; but the spirit of violence proved unable to crush the spirit of meekness, and had at last to acknowledge its superiority, and to submit, in great degree, at all events, to the authority and example of our Lord. The mostly highly organized physical force that the world at that day had ever seen was slowly but surely undermined by the spirit of Christian meekness and love; and from that moment Christian principles of conduct extended their authority more and more over the whole range of worldly life, and even over the fierce passions and struggles of war. Gradually there became established those principles of chivalry under which, as our great philosophical statesman described it, there prevailed “that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.” That great amelioration of human passion and of human evil was won by the persistent contemplation and assertion of the authority and example of our Lord, and by the perpetual inculcation of the teaching of His Apostles. The Spirit of God, descending as on this great day, inspired Evangelists and Apostles to write those Gospels in which the Person, the teaching, and the example of our Saviour are so marvellously depicted, and those Epistles in which they are brought home to our hearts with such touching force. The same Spirit was vouchsafed to the great teachers and leaders of the Church, and quickened in the hearts of the people at large the gracious seed which was thus sown. If the new embodiment of the rule of force in human affairs is to be effectually overcome, it can only be by the same means. It cannot be done by our arms alone. Force alone is no remedy for force.