It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be gathered.  It is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged.  And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one.  Those will be there whom we have met and helped; or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised.  No other witness need be summoned.  No other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred.  Be not deceived.  The words which all of us shall one day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ.  Thank God the Christianity of today is coming nearer the world’s need.  Live to help that on.  Thank God men know better, by a hairbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is.  Who is Christ?  He who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick.  And where is Christ?  Where?—­Whoso shall receive a little child in My name receiveth Me.  And who are Christ’s?  Every one that loveth is born of God.

WAGNER

I AM A VOICE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles Wagner, French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was born in 1851 in Alsace.  He is at present rector of the Reformed Church in Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine.  He received a comprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg and Goettingen, and after undertaking many cures in the provinces he went to Paris in 1882, where he occupied himself in a crusade against the degrading tendency of life, art and literature in certain of their Parisian phases.  He has been a founder of several popular universities under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Morality.  He has published many books, and “La Vie Simple” ("The Simple Life”) was crowned by the French Academy and has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Japanese.  Wagner has been styled the French Tolstoy, but he is less visionary and much more popular and practical in his views than the Russian mystic.  The author of “The Simple Life” was greeted with many expressions of warm appreciation on his visit to the United States a few years ago.  He was a guest at the Presidential mansion by invitation of President Roosevelt, who has highly commended “The Simple Life.”

WAGNER

Born in 1851

I am A voice[1]

[Footnote 1:  From “The Gospel of Life,” by Charles Wagner, by permission of the McClure Company, publishers.  Copyright, 1905, by McClure, Phillips & Co.]

I am the voice[2] of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.—­John i., 23.

[Footnote 2:  In the French version of the Scriptures it is “a voice,” and it is necessary to retain this reading in order to render precisely Pastor Wagner’s thought.—­Translator.]