xiii.] NATURE AND GRACE. 325 



of the whole Jewish race with Israel their forefather, 

 as strongly as any prophet of the Old Testament ? 

 And what is the central historic fact, save One, of the 

 New Testament, but the conquest of Jerusalem the 

 dispersion, all but destruction of a race, not by miracle, 

 but by invasion, because found wanting when weighed 

 in the stern balances of natural and social law ? 



Gentlemen, think of this. I only suggest the 

 thought; but I do not suggest it in haste. Think 

 over it by the light which our Lord's parables, His 

 analogies between the physical and social constitution 

 of the world, afford and consider whether those awful 

 words, fulfilled then and fulfilled so often since " The 

 kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to 

 a nation bringing forth the fruits hereof " may not 

 be the supreme instance, the most complex develop- 

 ment of a law which runs through all created things, 

 down to the moss which struggles for existence on the 

 rock ! 



Do I say that this is all ? That man is merely a 

 part of Nature, the puppet of circumstances and here- 

 ditary tendencies ? That brute competition is the one 

 law of his life ? That he is doomed for ever to be the 

 slave of his own needs, enforced by an internecine 

 struggle for existence ? God forbid. I believe not 

 only in Nature, but in Grace. I believe that this is 

 man's fate only as long as he sows to the flesh, and of 

 the flesh reaps corruption. I believe that if he will 



Strive upward, working out the beast, 

 And let the ape and tiger die ; 



if he will be even as wise as the social animals ; as the 

 ant and the bee, who have risen, if not to the virtue of 



