And what have we to counteract the depression which is the natural reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of Christ?  We have the truth which is embodied in Mary’s Magnificat, we have the fact of Mary’s vocation to be the Mother of God.  The revelation of God’s meaning and purpose is a basis of optimism which no promise of Satan can overthrow.  When all is said, the view from the exceeding high mountain is a view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well.  From this point of vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, “You are losing life,” the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of manhood.  “In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and you have not attained” so they say.  True:  we count not ourselves to have yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of our high calling in Christ Jesus our Lord.  We are not in a hurry, because the crown we are seeking is amaranthine, unfading.  We are not compelled to compress our enjoyment within a given time; we do not awake each morning with the thought that we may not outlast the daylight; we are not hurried and fevered with the sense of our fragility.  The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them must be seized now:  Satan cannot afford to wait because his kingdom has an end.  But God can afford to wait because of His Kingdom there is no end.

We are content then with promises and with such partial fulfilment as we find on our pilgrim-way.  We are content because we see the end in the beginning.  To those who in the first days of the Church objected that though the promises were wonderful and abundant the fulfilment was small; to those who said we do not yet see the perfection of the kingdom; the answer of inspiration was:  True, we do not yet see the accomplishment of all of God’s promises, but we do see Jesus.  And there is where we stand to-day.  The work that God has to do in the spiritualising of the human race is tremendous; but we actually see its beginning in Jesus, and we are content to wait with God for the perfect accomplishment.

And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms of time, that the length of time that is required to accomplish the spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms of the divine will but in terms of the human will.  It is not divine power but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God will not compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have any spiritual value.  And we can estimate something of the human resistance that has to be overcome by concentrating attention upon one unit of that resistance.