memorable series of experiments, Newton showed that refraction simply separates the colours already existing in the white light. Thus all of our rich human colors lie back, fold upon fold and hue upon hue, in the white light of the Saviour of the World. In Him we touch the unfathomed mysteriousness of our own being; in Him we glimpse the unplumbed deeps in the Being of God; and so, in Him, our wandering spiritual tones are gathered up and wrought into unjarring harmonies. He alone unveils the essential worth of the human, giving it unfluctuating value in the mystic markets of Eternity. We are told that the force of gravity is twenty-seven times greater on the surface of the sun than it is on the earth. If a man could be transferred to the sun, he would weigh two tons. Is it not richly suggestive of the increased value and weight of a human being, standing in the revealing glory of the Light of the World? The creative Christ explains the divine estimate of human beings.

II

The creativeness of light is superior only to its marvellous power in putting on various forms and colours. Here is this blood-red rose. Hold it close to your soul-ear, and its crimson lips whisper: "My rich red comes from the fiery red of the sun." But here is another rose. Its petals are hued with a tender goldenness. Hear also its confession of

faith: “I, too, believe in the very same sun that gives beauty to my heart-red sister." Now look up: there goes a tuneful lover on wings. His brooklike madrigal flows refreshingly down out of the air. Yet his song is hardly more sweetly miraculous than is his wondrous back of grey, his delicately white tail feathers, and his white and blackish wings. But, by way of contrast, a tuft of flashing yellow streaked with jet black is doing bird-wonders in a nearby tree. Yet the large white-and-black-trimmed warbler, as well as that small saffron-and-dark-velvet-gowned creature, are alike the artistic exhibitions of the sun. Deep in the jungles the tiger burns with a fierce brightness. How did bars of such exquisite softness come to lie down upon that ferocious body? Through the versatility of the very sun that lends to the mane of the lion, the tiger's master, its tawny gold. Look at these three grapes: one is purple, one is blue-black, one is emerald. Is not each just a variegated globe of sun-juice? For light revels in clothing itself in million-tinted hues. Light is the secret of all that is fair and beautiful in earth and sea and sky. The thousand-featured creation says: "I am what I am because light is what it is."

But light's versatility in the physical is just a large hint at our Lord's versatility in the spiritual. What true man ever lived that did not own Him Master and King? There is no such thing as human trueness apart from Christ's indwelling the human and

expanding it into its possible human largeness and nobility. Life devoid of Christliness is a sun-ray sheared off from the sun. What kind of human temperament is there that cannot be mastered into spiritual kingliness by Christ? Verily, He is the Saviour of the men-who-can't that they may become the men-who-can. The King-Man of the Universe imparts royalty to His subjects by virtue of His splendidly creative power and versatility.

Consider this for a little. It is quite generally admitted that Shakespeare is the most opulent and many-sided genius in history. Think of the poet's power to project himself into so many different characters. Now he is a king, now a queen, now a clown, now an Antony, now a Cleopatra, now a Cæsar, now a Hamlet, now an Ophelia, now an Iago, now a Romeo, now a Juliet. Is not Shakespeare's overwhelming genius seen in his ability to assume any character? Seemingly, he delights in hiding himself behind the overflowing richness of his powers. We know so little of Shakespeare, the man himself is veiled in a kind of perplexing twilight, just because he conceals himself in so many varied human rôles. Thinking of his fund of sentiments, maxims, and observations; of his influence on science, art, history, politics, physics, and philosophy, the critic can only say: "Shakespeare is like a great primeval forest, whence timber shall be cut and used as long as winds blow and leaves are green."

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But if Shakespeare, by his affluent genius, recreates in imagination and moves his characters to and fro in the fields of memory, Christ exercises first-hand, creative lordship over all kinds and conditions of souls, and causes them to manifest His spirit in successive ages and in countless spheres of life. Here, for example, is John, brother of James, son of Zebedee. Like his father and brother, he is a fisherman; he is one of millions of Jews living in the first century of our era; he is an ambitious, hot-tempered, average human being; goodness and badness retire with him every night and get up with him every morning. But," you say, we call him Saint John; his writings are more familiar, if far less voluminous than Shakespeare's; what, then, is the explanation of this wonderful man?" There is but one answer: Saint John is a disciple of Christ, a shining human beam raying out from the Light of the World. A very different man, by the whole diameter of being almost, is that haughty, powerful young Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. His righteousness is as perpendicular as Cleopatra's Needle over in Central Park, and almost as hard. Yet this disciple-slaying Saul not only changes his name, he himself is changed. The substance of his character is transformed; the inmost fibre of his being is recreated; the centre of his personality is shifted. What caused it? Who wrought it? If the pillared firmament be not rottenness, nor earth's base built on stubble, Jesus Christ as certainly

changed Paul the persecutor into Paul the saint as two and two make four, as the air you breathe strikes health through your cheeks. The universe is no stronger argument for the being of God than are John and Paul for the redemptive versatility of Christ. Nature grows only one kind of leaf to a tree, though the tree may flaunt hundreds of its kind; but the Tree of Life is green and golden with every variety of age, temperament, strength, weakness, faith, hope, love. All hang there, mellow and beautiful, as they take on an ever-deepening ripeness. William Blake's childhood imagination was so vivid that, playing among the trees of the field, he thought he saw angels in every one. And do not eyes washed in the silver waters of Christian faith see something quite as wonderful? Walking in the fields of history, we behold the overarching, outspreading branches of the Tree of Life. Distinctly visible among those branches are Augustine, Francis, Ignatius, Bernard, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Robertson, Beecher, Brooks, Martineau, Fairbairn, Gladstone, and a great multitude no man can number out of all tribes and kingdoms and peoples. There they cluster, in immortal greenness, growing larger, more Christlike, more awestruck, more thrillingly alive, as our poor, distraught human regiments march bleedingly on to the coronation of the Christ in the completion of the worlds. Why, when we think of our Lord's versatility, little wonder that the Swan of Avon should forget to