duty is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God (not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader?  These are small matters, you may say, but “straws show which way the wind blows,” and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters.  Every life is made up largely of small things, “the little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love” which some one has called “the noblest portion of a good man’s life.”

With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of the spirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore of secondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of the Christian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those of which we need to be reminded today.  We have already spoken of that child-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the common things of daily life—­Christ’s life of ministry, of good works (which was, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity and preaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those who were with him to “tell no man”; therefore the good works which are done “in His likeness” must not be done in public.  If we are “seen of men,” verily we have our reward.  Christ’s life ended in apparent failure, in ignominious death on the cross.  The world worships today’s success and immediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, must accept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret:  “And my Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”  A touching poem of Francis Thompson’s pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards in Paradise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved.  The man asks of God: 

  O when did I give Thee drink erewhile,
     Or when embrace Thine unseen feet? 
   What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ’s smile,
     Who am a guest here most unmeet?

and is answered

  When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet
    (Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine)
   I felt the embraces on My feet. 
    (Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine.)

A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which is love, begins at home, and that we love and serve God best in His holy human relationships—­if we love not our brother whom we have seen how can we love God whom we have not seen?

Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original, suffer for others.  When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing we are but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly and voluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we are transcending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, the Christian virtue.  No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of the sacrifice of the millions of young lives who “stormed Heaven” in their willingness to die that others might live,