lect, places of authority, situations of power, are all appeals to sacred duty. It is not confined to rulers and those in high places; for we have all our sphere of influence; we all have our area of authority. To a man who accepts the great fact of life we have been considering, the meanest action on earth is to accept the fruits of office without the burdens, to be tenacious of rights without one thought for the duties.

When we think of how we are bound together, will we not make it a great union of high thought and noble deed, a mighty engine of good for the preservation and propagation of good? Will we not give our lives to the service of the best? When we realise how lives can be blasted, and hearts broken, and souls degraded by our sin and our selfishness, will we not look upon our influence as a sacred duty, and be willing that a millstone be hanged round our neck and we be cast into the midst of the sea, rather than that we should by evil influence or example put a stumbling-stone before one of these little ones? When we understand the dread power given to each of us to make or mar, to bless or curse others, will we not be touched by pity for the pathos of human life? Will we not feel something of the divine emotion of the Master Himself, who when He saw the multitudes was moved with compassion because they

fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd? Is there nothing we can do to take our share of the heavy but blessed burden, nothing we can do of social service, nothing to guard and teach the children for the country we love, nothing we can do to sweeten and save and hallow human life for others? Will we not vow that our influence at least shall be cast on the side of the angels, on the side of pity and love and goodness, on the side of God and the right? Or will we merely stand aside with those who see the irony and the tragedy but feel no sting of pity and offer no swift hand of help, who merely say in the sorrow that has no succour or the anger that has no inspiration, "These sheep, what have they done?"

For, further, this dread fact of the solidarity of the race, besides being a call to duty, is also the great hopefulness of the situation. It is because of this that every effort tells. Every noble life, every beautiful character, every gentle deed, even every high aspiration leaves its mark. If punishment is vicarious, so also is goodness. If sin is vicarious, so also is redemption. If evil contaminates others, so also love is a centre of light and life. Just as every wicked man lowers the tone of social vitality, so every true life creates an environment where others can

grow in gracious life. This is the true and ennobling way of looking at the whole problem. It is a summons to every form of Christian endeavour. We enter somewhat into the mystery of the cross, filling up what was lacking of the sufferings of Christ.

These sheep, what have they done? "The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep."

XXVI

A MEEK KING!

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy King cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation; meek, and riding upon an ass, even a colt the foal of an ass.-ZECHARIAH ix. 9; ST. MATTHEW Xxi. 5.

ONE of the most remarkable things in the remarkable history of Israel was the way in which the nation clung to the idea of kingship. In spite of constant disappointments, in spite of weakness and folly and oppression and shameful sin among so many of their actual kings, the people never gave up the hope and expectation that at last the God-given king would arise and lead them to a great future. They looked back to David's glorious reign, and looked forward to a son of David establishing the throne in righteousness, a true ruler of men, a very signet ring on the hand of God.

The failure of their kings historically only drove them to enrich the idea of kingship, and make it more spiritual, and alter its features, till it became the beautiful picture of the later prophets. He was

still a leader of men, still a hero who should establish righteousness and peace, and heal all the grievous evils of the body politic. But the ideal has changed from the ordinary strong king, warrior, and statesman, with the pomp of courts. The figure loses in external trappings, but becomes infinitely sweeter and nobler, and gains in inward grace. In the school of God, through which the nation passed with much tribulation, they learned to look deeper for the real marks of kingship; and so we can trace the gradual growth in spiritual power of the idea. After the abject failure of the kings of Judah, which was a religious failure as well as a political one, after the exile had disillusioned the nation, the dream of a true son of David did not die out of their hearts; it only took a deeper hold. He would still come, the Servant of the Lord, who would rule in the name of the Lord, but he would be different in character from the old dream, different from the ordinary oriental despot, which most of the kings had made their ideal. His glory was to be different from even the glory of Solomon.

Here, for example, in this passage of our text we see how the new glory of a beautiful character had impressed the nation in its expected deliverer. The passage is one of the most terrible in the Bible, full