TENDER HEART OF OUR HUMANITY

Works so. He was one of the exceptional cases which test the mie.

We are apt to regard the sufferings of Jésus as voluntary, but having respect to that which was in him, and to the situation amid which it came to manifestation, the agony was involuntary ; he could not save himself , he could do no other. Just as involuntary — and maybe if we knew ail, though it requires a prophet's venture of faith to assert it, just as significant in its own measure, — is the sufîering of the slum-worker in the sweater' s den, and the suifering of the criminal in the prison cell.

It was when he looked upon a picture of the dead Christ by Fra Bartolomeo that Carpenter's mind leaped from the particular to the gênerai, and saw in one the truth of ail ;

O People crucified in every land,

Mothers in ail the earth weeping your sons l

Sisters and lovers kissing the feet of love,

Poor way-wom feet, gross toil-disôguied hands,

So loved, so loved I

Once more the dead Christ lies, bome down the ages.^

To his vision, ail the world's sufîerers are seen compacted together and forming the central organ of the race-body — * ' O tender heart of our humanity." They together are the " sufEering servant," who is the Messiah. This heart, bruised, pouring forth its soûl unto death (but