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with its organised and compacted strength, and all the modern nations making each its distinct and recognisable contribution to the great family of nations, the members of which are not monotonously uniform, but embody the most interesting kind of unity in their great diversity of character. In the midst of this beautiful variety stands the nation of the Jews, for ever representing spiritual life.

Sometimes there come to us wonderings and questionings when we look at this variety of national character, each nation offering some type of life or some moral quality peculiarly its own— wonderings and questionings which correspond to those with which we ponder on the variety of individual characters which make up the united society in the midst of which we live. A new nation is born like a new man. A nation such as ours comes forth, latest and best equipped, into the light of day. What shall we expect of this last

born of time?

Shall we stand by and watch to see what special quality is to be embodied herewhether a new nation of learning, or a new nation of power, or a new nation of wealth, or a new nation of philosophy and religion is going to occupy this continent so long reserved for some one of the last experiments of human life? Does there not sometimes come to us another dream, which is that somehow on this vast latest field the types which elsewhere history has developed may find some

kind of union; that here may come a larger national character capable of comprehending all; that here may come wealth, not base, selfish, and vulgar, as wealth is when it lives alone, but pervaded and sanctified by spiritual ambitions and the consciousness of holy uses; that here may come religion, not only as the personal delight and education of the single soul, but also as the organised salvation of humanity; that here Law may learn the lesson of Grace and become not merely the restraint but the development of crude and sinful men; that learning here may prove itself a truly moral force and make men better as it makes them wise? Can any thoughtful man look into the future of our country and not dream some such great dream as this? There is something better which must come some day than merely another and another of these partial, one-sided studies of humanity, devoted to the development of some single quality or type of life. Sometime the

universal nation, like the universal man, must come, in which quality shall blend with quality, each lending the other at once its richness and its restraint, and so the complete nationality, the true kingdom of God, shall be established.

Let us indulge that dream; but meanwhile let us rejoice that every nation stands for something, that God has ordained that in each national life some excellence of human nature shall be embodied. When we feel this, then we can enter into the joy

of Isaiah, his triumph in the thought that, because that which his nation stood for was the noblest and most precious thing of all, therefore all other nations, however much greater they might be in the wealth of their treasuries and in the number of their armies, must own the superior power of his Jerusalem and be drawn by its attractions. This is the idea which is in the words that he hears God speaking in the text, "Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations which know not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God". We cannot tell just what picture was in Isaiah's mind and hovering before his eyes. We do not know just what degree of visible sovereignty he hoped to see Jerusalem attain-but the essential idea is clear enough. He believed that all people were to turn to the Hebrews because the Hebrews were especially God's people, because the nations would all feel that the God whom they all must have had been made known with the completest clearness and purity among the Jews. How clearly that prophecy has been fulfilled all subsequent history can tell. The Hebrew Book, the Hebrew men, have been the magnets which have drawn the world's devotion. Into the midst of Judaism was set the Incarnation of the Godhead, which, shining out from thence, has been the light which has en

lightened every man. The Bible is the very epitome of Judaism, and the Bible. is the centre more and more completely of the world's devotion.

"Nations that know not thee shall run unto thee." What words like those could prophesy the scenes which have come in these modern days,-Englishmen, Italians, Germans, Americans seeking the law of inspiration of their life in the old Hebrew Bible, turning those venerable pages to learn how they ought to live, drinking at the fountain of the ideas of Israel the strength and cleansing which their own modern life demanded. We abase the Jew, sometimes we sneer at him and despise him—but we live upon the thoughts which he has thought, and the visions which he saw of God make the very sunshine of our life.

I think that we do not take in as we should this picture of the Hebrew standing as the great Image of Spirituality in the world's life, and of the power which he has exercised thereby. But it is not of that that I mainly wish to speak to-day. I am thinking of it as a sort of parable. It represents to me the way in which the spiritual man everywhere is meant to be the central man, the fire, the inspiration, the illumination and attraction of mankind. There is a certain sort of man who is among his fellow-men what Israel was among the nations. Other men are richer, other men are mightier, than he. Often their riches and their might seem to crowd upon him, as Assyria and Egypt crowded upon Judea, and leave him no chance to breathe; but in the long run he is the King of life. Men turn to him in their deepest moments and with

their deepest needs. He helps men very different from, very much greater than, himself. To become such a man is the truest and worthiest ambition of a human soul. To be content to live without being such a man in some degree shows a pusillanimous and feeble nature.

Let us not seem to be claiming preposterous honour for any one kind of man, until first we have examined what sort of man he is. This Jew man among his brethren, this man of spirituality-what is it to be spiritual? Ah! that old question! How men have asked it of themselves or one another! What answers they have given to it! How they have tried to make themselves think that they were spiritual when really they were only formal or only sentimental! How men have given up the question in despair! How they have said, "It is impossible for me. that woman, may

it

Is there, then, any

is to be a spiritual

I think we can,

That man, be spiritual, but not I!" answer? Can we tell what man and to live spiritually? certainly. A spiritual man is a man who deals with the spirits and the souls of things, and lives for them. Is that intelligible? Here are two generous men. Both of them give their money freely. One of them is spiritually generous, the other is unspiritually generous. What is the difference? One of them loves generosity for itself, the other loves it only for the result it brings. One of them rejoices in the very fact of sharing with his

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