and to kill and to destroy; to inspire them with His own divine compassion; to give life and to give it abundantly?  And is it not true that so far as men do receive of His fulness, so far as they are brought under the control of His spirit, they do cease to be destroyers and devourers of the bodies and souls of their fellows, and become helpers, saviors, life-bringers?  And is not this included in His meaning when He says:  “I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly”?

To-day, then, we hail Him as Prince of Life, the glorious Giver to men of the one supreme and crowning good.  And the manner of the giving is not hard to understand.  He gives life by kindling in our hearts the flame of sacred love.  Love is life.  Love to God and man brings the soul into unity with itself; it is obeying its own organic law, and obedience to its law brings to any organism life and health and peace.  If the spirit of Christ has become the ruling principle of our conduct, then we have entered into life, and it is a life that knows no term; it is the immortal life.  If the spirit of Christ has entered into our lives, then in all our relations with others life is increased; we are by nature givers of good; out of our lives are forever flowing healing, restoring, saving, vitalizing influences; and when all the members of the society in which we move have received this spirit and manifest it, there are none to bite and devour, to hurt and destroy; the predatory creatures have ceased their ravages, and the world rejoices in the plenitude of life which He came to bring.

We hail Him, then, to-day, as the Lord and Giver of life.  We desire to share with Him the unspeakable gift, and to share it, as best we may, with all our fellow men.  What we freely receive from Him, we would freely give.  What the whole world needs to-day is life, more life, fuller life, larger life.  We spend all our energies in heaping up the means of life, and never really begin to live; our strength is wasted, our health is broken, our intellects are impoverished, our affections are withered, our peace is destroyed in our mad devotion to that which is only an adjunct or appendage of life.  Oh, if we could only understand how good a thing it is to live, just to live, truly and freely and largely and nobly, to live the life that is life indeed!

Shall we not draw to this Prince of Life and take from Him the gift that He came to bring?  Is not this the one thing needful?  We are reading and hearing much in these days of the simple life.  What is it but the life into which they are led who take the yoke of this Master upon them and learn of Him?  It is a most cheering omen that this little book of Pastor Wagner’s is falling into so many hands and littering its ingenuous and persuasive plea before so many minds and in so many homes.  If we heed it, it must bring us back to the simplicity of Christ.  Pastor Wagner is only preaching over again the Sermon on the Mount; it is nothing but the