The nest is shattered! The birds are out upon the empty air. We know not what the end may be. We know not the ghastly harvest of the plain below. But this we know, that our hope must be in God. He will not be far from those who put their trust in Him. He will be above, below, and round about them, to bear them on His strong pinions, for "the Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." III ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE: THE SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE TEXT" The new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all.”—Colossians 3:10, 11. THE sentiments of these words are echoed in many parts of the scripture, but they fall with peculiar and startling force from the lips of Paul because in birth and training and temperament he was the greatest individualist of his day. The native atmosphere of this youth was designed to call him away from the world-idea of the common life of man, and everything conspired to make him proud and exclusive and self-contained. By nature he was one of those independent spirits who is born to lead, who is a pioneer in the world of thought, blazing new trails, establishing new standards, and setting aside with a fine aloof ness of soul the assistance and companionship of men. He had been born, as you know, into the great Roman Empire, the proudest and most exclusive of the old empires of the world. When occasion demanded it, Paul appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen, and even to the last the flash of the old Roman fire would leap forth from his eye. And above all things here was a man whose religion was the religion of the Jew. It was narrow; it was Pharisaic; it was traditional; it was exclusive; it was selfish. He himself reminds us that "after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee," that he was "a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, concerning zeal persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." And now in the very intensity of that exclusive life there swept over the man a change -a breath-a power that broke down all barriers, that overleaped all boundaries, that lifted and pushed back the horizons until the social and racial and religious differences among men disappeared and there emerged instead the |