To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of time."

Ah, yes, but the reverse is also true, and the tyranny of one nation crushes farther into the earth the slave of every land. It was for that reason that all the world regarded the sacking of Louvain, not only as a crime against Belgium, but as a crime against Humanity.

"So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave where'er he cowers feels his sympathies

with God,

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod."

And that is possible because men are bound together, and for the reason that when you smite one life you smite the whole corporate life of

man.

"For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct bears

along,

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right

or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast

frame,

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame:

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim."

THE BASIS

This then is the fact, and now, in the second place, we ask for the basis on which it surely rests. What is this binding element in human life? I have already hinted that it lies deeper than language or color or climate or creed. It does not rest upon the natural affinities of the nations, for even in the present war many of the natural affinities are destroyed and unnatural antagonisms or unnatural alliances have risen up. Britain and Germany, oftentimes the allies of the past in the cause of liberty, are ranged against each other to-day, but the time will come again, we trust, when the true Germany will stand once more as the champion of freedom. Russia and Japan, fighting a few years ago to the bitter death in the Orient, have joined hands in a common cause. South Africa twelve years ago was slaughtering Britain's sons on the

South African veldt and now is sending her sons to the defence of the Empire. No! No! This solidarity of the race lies deeper than any consideration I have named. If you will note two phrases in my text you will see how Paul reveals the bonds that bind the race in one. In the first part of the verse he tells us that man was created in the likeness of God, "after the image of Him that created him"; in the last part of the verse he tells us that all the distinctions are blotted out because Christ is present in human life and "Christ is all and in all." Here, then, are the foundations on which the solidarity of the race abides -first, because the human is created in the image of the Divine, and second, because the Divine is incarnate in the image of the human. Take this congregation here to-night. You are strangers to me, many of you, and most of you to one another, and yet we are all bound together in a solidarity of life. It is not because we live in the same city, or speak the same language, or seek the same interests. It is because that in me and in you and in every one of us there is the image of God. It may be, and it is, fearfully defaced and scarred,

but nevertheless the traces of the image remain. We have something in common, and it is the shattered heritage of the Divine. Some of you will say that the only common quality we have is sin, and it is true we all have that quality—no man without it--but man has sin because man has a moral nature that is capable of good or evil, and man has a moral nature because he was created in the image of God.

But that is not all. There is another unifying bond-it is the presence of Christ. You talk about the solidarity of the race. What if God Himself were to step into the solidarity! And this He has done. "A God must mingle with the game." Christ is the ideal head of humanity. Their common hopes and fears and aspirations, their sin and their salvation, are all undertaken by Him. He has assumed the liabilities of the race. He has taken over the spiritual fortunes of the whole world. When you remember that every man in the world is a man for whom Christ died, that every man in the world is a man in whom Christ may reproduce Himself, that every man in the world is a man for whom Christ alone has fur

nished the opportunity to realize the best and the highest and be changed into His image -then you begin to see how for humanity "Christ is all and in all," how we are bound together not only by the failure of the first Adam, but by the victory of the last Adam, and how it may be true that in Him "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."

THE IMPLICATIONS

The implications arising from this great truth are too many and far-reaching to be followed out to-night. But there are two of them that I wish to emphasize before I close-the one is the great obligation resting upon each of us because of our place in the solid world, the other is the great hope coming to us because of God's place in the same solidarity of life.

1. We get a glimpse of the tremendous responsibility that rests upon each individual life. Because of the solidarity of the race it lies