Sunday at Home.

Southern Cross, Volume 13, Issue 13, 24 June 1905, Page 11

Sunday at Home.

CHRIST AS A REFORMER. The barest justice demands that Christ should have all the glory which we now associate with the word “ freedom.” Every ancient Government, whatever it called itself, was really an absolute despotism. The Greek had, no personal rights wha‘ever against the State. All the State did was “ right.” There was no higher law than the law of the land, and the law of the land was the law in which the few oppressed the many, and in which the rich despised the poor. If that is no longer the case, it is entirely due to Jesus Christ, The fact is that when Christ came, in the world to which he came, man as man was nothing, and had no lights. The State pursued its own sordid and selfish ends without any regard to the sacred personal rights of the individual. Hence war and lust and anguish unspeakable. When we begin to regard every human being as the brother or sister of Jesus Christ, how it will alter our conduct ! We meet some poor prodigal in rags and in want. He excites within us positive loathing, bub we know tbat tbe hideous creature is a son or a brother of a dear friend of ours, and for the sake of bis father or his brother, we show him every courtesy and every kindness. Allow a similar thought to help you when you are repelled by the degradation or the wickedness of the victims of sin. They are as dear to the heart of God as you are yourself, and neither you nor your country has any right to do anything tbat will injure them. This is a new idea, among many other new ideas, which Christ came to proclaim and to act upon—an idea so new, so revolutionary, that we do not believe it yet, although Christ has been trying for nineteen centuries to persuade us of its truth. But some day it will be believed, and on that day sin and misery will begin to totter toward their final fall.—Prom a sermon by tbe Rev. Hugh Price Hughes.