Eighteen centuries ago,the Master of this man tried reform in the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this,and did not fail.His disciple,showing Him to-night to cultured hearers,showing the clearness of the God-power acting through Him,shrank back from one coarse fact;that in birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people:his flesh,their flesh;their blood,his blood;tempted like them,to brutalize day by day;to lie,to steal:the actual slime and want of their hourly life,and the wine-press he trod alone.
Yet,is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth?If the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night,as he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee,before His Father and their Father,despised and rejected of men,without a place to lay His head,wounded for their iniquities,bruised for their transgressions,would not that hungry mill-boy at least,in the back seat,have "known the man"?That Jesus did not stand there.
Wolfe rose at last,and turned from the church down the street.
He looked up;the night had come on foggy,damp;the golden mists had vanished,and the sky lay dull and ash-colored.He wandered again aimlessly down the street,idly wondering what had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet.The trial-day of this man's life was over,and he had lost the victory.