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92 joy. Be faithful at the temple gate of conscience, wakefully guard it; then thou wilt know when the thief cometh.

The constant spectacle of sin thrust upon the pure sense of the immaculate Jesus made him a man of sorrows. He lived when mortals looked ignorantly, as now, on the might of divine power manifested through man; only to mock, wonder, and perish. Sad to say, the cowardice and self-seeking of his disciples helped crown with thorns the life of him who broke not the bruised reed and quenched not the smoking flax, — who caused not the feeble to fall, nor spared through false pity the consuming tares. Jesus was compassionate, true, faithful to rebuke, ready to forgive. He said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” “Love one another, as I have loved you.” No estrangement, no emulation, no deceit, enters into the heart that loves as Jesus loved. It is a false sense of love that, like the summer brook, soon gets dry. Jesus laid down his life for mankind; what more could he do? Beloved, how much of what he did are we doing? Yet he said, “The works that I do shall he do.” When this prophecy of the great Teacher is fulfilled we shall have more effective healers and less theorizing; faith without proof loses its life, and it should be buried. The ignoble conduct of his disciples towards their Master, showing their unfitness to follow him, ended in the downfall of genuine Christianity, about the year 325, and the violent death of all his disciples save one.

The nature of Jesus made him keenly alive to the