mountain, far apart from every human being, while deeper and deeper night flings her gloomy shadows over him, that one scene seems a picture of his whole earthly life. From the manger to the cross he was alone. Through his whole life there ran a deep, silent, sad under-current of loneliness. Let us examine some of the causes which produced it.

1st. Great minds, in advance of their age, are always lonely. Suppose a man steps out into the street of a great city about 2 o'clock in the night. The thoroughfares, like arteries, stretch away in every direction, but no life throbs through them. The city's pulse is still. The long lines of business houses are somber, blank walls. The stillness of a vast cemetery rests on everything. A dull sound heard afar off, or a form gliding through the distant shadows but makes the scene more weird. An indescribable feeling of loneliness comes over the spectator. That man standing in the midst of a slumbering city, is a good type of a great mind in advance of his age.

How lonely Martin Luther must have felt when he looked around him and saw all Europe asleep; drugged into profound unconsciousness by those powerful opiates, the false teachings of the Roman Catholic church. When Galileo published his discovery that the earth moves the priests pronounced him a heretic, and on pain of death they made him kneel and say that he was mistaken. But it is told that as he rose to his feet he muttered through his clenched teeth, "It does move." As the great astronomer went back to his observatory and looked out upon his only friends, the stars, he must have felt very lonely.

When Columbus was upon his first voyage of discovery, far out on an unknown ocean, though he was the commander of the little fleet, he walked the deck of his

ship a solitary man. And when the coward fears of his crew became so great that they rose in mutiny and gathered around him to force him to turn back, and here and there he could see the gleam of a half-drawn dagger, Columbus stood at bay a grand picture of loneliness. Such men as Columbus, Galileo and Luther stand out like the peaks of a mountain range. They tower in lonely grandeur far above their companions. Christ was the grandest, loneliest of them all.

True, the people of Luther's age were asleep. Spiritual night had settled over Europe, but the lives of the early church fathers beamed down upon them like stars, and the Bible, like the full moon, had risen into the sky, and, though clouds of error sadly obscured its light, it shone occasionally through the rifts with great brilliance as upon the homes of the Waldenses in the Christian valleys of Piedmont. But the people of Christ's age were asleep in the rayless darkness of heathenism. The night of Egypt had settled over the world. There was not even any little Land of Goshen where the people had light in their dwellings. Deep spiritual darkness "that might be felt" rested upon the souls of men. Their greatest philosophers wondered and doubted if man is immortal.

The Bible was but partly written and had scarcely risen above the hills of Palestine, and there its light was so obscured by a dense cloud of vain traditions that it might be called a "land of darkness, the region and shadow of death!" Christ was immeasurably in advance of the age in which he lived. His teachings were new, such as had never been dreamed of before. The Sermon on the Mount fell with startling strangeness upon the ears of those who heard it. It had been said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"; that is, if a man tears out your eye, tear out his eye; if he knocks

out your teeth, knock out his teeth. This was the teaching of the whole world. He was considered a coward who did not promptly punish one who had injured him.

Revenge was honorable. But Christ said, "Resist not evil"; "If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also"; "If a man sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also"; "If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain." It had been said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy." But Christ said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you and do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you." The doctrine of forgiveness was as new to the people of that age as it would have been to the North American Indians. Christ brought a new power into the world's history and proclaimed that love was stronger than hate; nay that love, pitifully weak as it seemed, should yet rule the world.

Again, in the time of Christ, woman was degraded; everywhere she was the slave or the toy of her master; nowhere was she considered his equal. But Christ said, "The man and his wife are no more twain but one flesh "; thus making her the equal of her husband.

Again, Christ said, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Thus in one breath he swept away every system of religion on the earth, for all the world were trusting in good works; like Nicodemus they had never so much as heard of the new birth.

Again, Christ was the first to recognize the value of man; the first who strove to elevate the masses because they were men; the first who taught that a human soul is a diamond and no less valuable because it is in the mud. Nay, he stooped to raise that outcast class we

fear to touch with the tips of our gloved fingers; I mean the Mary Magdalenes of society. Christ set up a kingdom in which there were to be absolutely no distinctions. What great statesman ever did that, where rich and poor, bond and free, white, black, yellow and red should meet upon precisely the same level? He proclaimed the universal brotherhood of mankind; a lesson so contrary to men's haughty notions, that for eighteen centuries they have not half learned it, though God has often written it before their eyes in letters of blood. In the midst of his mighty ideas, the man, Jesus Christ, stood alone.

2d. Christ was lonely because he was pure. Imagine Satan in heaven. Though he could see happy beings around him in every direction and the songs of the redeemed were to swell up into his ears like the sound of many waters, still he would be lonely. He could not make them his companions. Their thoughts are pure, his are impure. Their aspirations are holy, his are unholy. Their hearts are full of love, his is full of hate and all manner of wickedness. He would have nothing in common with them; his loneliness would be profound. Reverse the picture. Christ came to this sinful world. His stainless purity had no fellowship with the wrongs and shames of which the earth was full. He looked around him upon "a world lying in wickedness." His sensitive soul must have shrunk within him at hearing the name of God blasphemed, or listening to the cry of the oppressed, or the fine sounding prayer of the hypocrite. His very disciples wounded him again and again. He had no companions. He was alone.

3d. Christ was lonely because he was not appreciated. What a solitary road inventors have sometimes been compelled to journey. Unappreciated, ridiculed,