=Our task to-day.=—­In these modern times we are still trying to understand what Jesus wanted and to bring it to pass in reality.  We are beginning to see that if all men are indeed sacred to our heavenly Father, then under the leadership of our everliving Christ, a fight is in store for us on behalf of all the millions of our brothers who are blinded by selfishness, haggard from want, embittered by injustice, stunted in soul and mind by ignorance, or tortured by all the agonies of war.  If there is to be a better world for any of us, it must be a better world for all of us.  It must be “everybody’s world.”

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Look up in the Bible dictionary, for further light on the background of Jesus’ life, Galilee, Nazareth, Capernaum.

2.  Read Matthew 4. 17.  Explain why the message of Jesus, like that of John, awakened such a quick response among the people.

3.  What did Jesus think of the rule of Rome?  Read Matthew 20. 25-27, and Luke 13. 31, 32.

4.  In contrast with the Zealots, what was Jesus’ plan for winning freedom and happiness, instead of the oppression and misery of Roman rule?  Read John 18. 33-38.

CHAPTER XXXII

A THOUSAND YEARS OF A NATION’S QUEST

In this course of study we have been tracing the progress of a great enterprise.  A race of people set out in the days of Abraham to seek the best in life.  Did they win or lose, succeed or fail?  What did they achieve, during a thousand years of striving?

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

Looking back over the whole period which we have studied, there are four short epochs which stand out in bright contrast to long stretches of darkness as times when the common people had a chance to enjoy some of the good things of life, or at least had reason to hope that they might some time gain them for themselves or their children.  These were the times of David, of Josiah, of Nehemiah, and of Simon the Maccabee.  These four men were all able and just leaders.  They were all inspired, to a greater or less extent, by the ideals of Abraham, Moses, and the great reformer-prophets.

=The long centuries of failure.=—­The lives of all four of these men together, however, do not cover much more than a century.  During the rest of the time, the common people were ground down under oppressors, either of their own race or foreign conquerors.  Generation after generation of fathers and mothers patiently toiled and struggled and suffered, in the hope that they might climb just a little higher toward the sunlight of health and comfort and the higher blessings of life.  Most of them struggled in vain.  It is true that a few of the more fortunate, in each generation, saw some little advance over earlier generations in the good things of civilization.  Such men as