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FREEDOM THROUGH OBEDIENCE.

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.-S. JOHN viii, 31, 32.

THESE half-disciples to whom our Blessed Lord first made His offer of freedom flared up with quick resentment. Their nationality had been all but destroyed by the Roman government, yet there was a native dignity in the Jewish race which made each member of it conscious of essential freedom. Especially so just now, when they were celebrating the annual Feast of Tabernacles. At no time would they be more utterly possessed with a sense of freedom than when each man had put aside his daily task, and donned holiday attire, to gather at a festival rich in memorials of national greatness. It was to a crowd of such holiday-makers that our Lord addressed His words: "If ye continue in My word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!"

The men who heard Him were stirred with indignation. "We are free. We are Abraham's seed. We were never in bondage to any man," they cried. "How sayest thou, 'Ye shall be made free?'"

Mankind, throughout all history, is found struggling for freedom; fighting for it, through many ages, with the sword, and in treaties, and constitutions, and charters, attempting to maintain it by law. But the winning of freedom by force often betrays the victor into a new form of tyranny, and the creation of freedom by law requires something more than law to make it effective. President Lincoln, by a stroke of the pen, gave legal freedom to the negro race in America, but a half a century of legal freedom has not sufficed to give the colored citizens actual liberty. The black man is thwarted by prejudice from both North and South, and even when white men champion his cause, it is in a manner of self-conscious reaction against color-prejudice, rather than of unbiassed justice, without regard to color.

Our Lord did not propose to give men freedom either by force or by law. There was a time when He could have placed Himself at

the head of a vast and formidable revolution in the world's affairs. But in the Garden of Gethsemane He rebuked the hasty follower who drew a sword. Instead of meeting force with force, He calmly yielded to force. And He was so far from believing in legislation as a cure-all that He refused to be judge for a man who appealed to Him because he could not otherwise get legal justice.

Freedom is not sustained by force, or defined by law. It is within the man, in a man's own heart, that the most glorious freedom should abide, and where the most abject slavery sometimes holds possession.

It was to this that our Lord referred when He said to the men of Jerusalem, "I will make you free." They seemed quite free as they passed into the porch of the great Temple, in holiday attire, and chatted together in the spacious alcoves. The Romans gave them good government. Life and property were safe. Business prospered. They were free to observe the sacred precepts of their religion, at home, or on street corners, if they liked, or in the Temple.

But our Lord's vision penetrated more deeply into the secrets of life. Outwardly you are free, He would say. Politically, free

enough. In business, yes. In religion, yes. There is plenty of toleration. But, "verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant, the slave, of sin." In every man's heart is the shadow of that slavery. There is no slavery like it. Force cannot reach it. Law cannot touch it. It forges its own chains, and winds them ever more tightly.

The drunkard awakes in the morning with aching head. "Never again!" says he. But the next night likely finds him reeling, and uproarious, and defiant of reform. He is a slave.

The lustful man, after he has yielded to his passion, is swept by gusts of remorse and shame. It may be that he is a man of otherwise noble and unselfish impulses, with fine dreams of beauty, and truth, and purity; so that after he has fallen into his besetting sin he almost cries out with agony that he, who should be so much of a man, has come to be no more than a beast. But the occasion or the opportunity of his indulgence again arrives, and you would never know that he ever struggled against it, or found it irksome to his conscience, so smilingly does he

yield again to his temptation. He is a slave.

The proud man despises his own pride, and becomes so weary of his everlasting egotism that the shame of it almost makes him humble. He would not for the world have anyone suspect how often he thinks of himself, how he poses, how he mentally struts, and preens himself. But struggle as he will to be humble, if he succeeds for a short time in the appearance of humility, he is so proud of it, so vain of his own modesty, all the more commendable in a man of real ability, that he becomes more bumptious than ever. He finds nothing done anywhere that he could not have done better. Of one thing he says, "Now, I should have done this so." Of another, "Why was I not consulted?" Some have the grace to conceal their egotism more than others. There is a blatant kind of vanity that takes pride in getting its name into the newspapers. But there is another selfconsuming kind of vanity that takes equal pride in keeping out of the newspapers. It is all of the same piece. Occasionally one gains a glimpse of the High and Holy One of Nazareth, despised and rejected of men, scourged, and nailed to the Cross; but it passes away, and one sees nothing but him