You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em. You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he'll be all right.

You tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay

day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right-all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.

I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with the big thieves.

I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion. I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.

I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha, where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is straight it was real blood ran from His Hands and the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.

THE REDEEMER

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

DARKNESS: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,

When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;

There, with much work to do before the light,

We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;
We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one.
Darkness: the distant wink of a huge gun.

I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;
A rocket fizzed, and burned with blanching flare,
And lit the face of what had been a form
Foundering in the mirk. He stood before me there:
I say that he was Christ; stiff in the glare,
And leaning forward from his burdening task,
Both arms supporting it; his eyes on mine
Stared from the woful head that seemed a mask
Of mortal pain in Hell's unholy shrine.

No thorny crown, only a woolen cap

He wore an English soldier, white and strong,
Who loved his time like any simple chap,
Good days of work and sport and homely song;
Now he has learned that nights are very long,
And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.
But to the end, unjudging, he'll endure
Horror and pain, not uncontent to die
That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.

He faced me, reeling in his weariness,
Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.
I say that he was Christ, who wrought to bless
All groping things with freedom bright as air,
And with His mercy washed and made them fair.
Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,
While we began to struggle along in the ditch;
And someone flung his burden in the muck,
Mumbling: "O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck."

THE GREAT MAN

EUNICE TIETJENS

I cannot always feel His greatness,

Sometimes He walks beside me, step by step.

And paces slowly in the ways—

The simple, wingless ways.

That my thoughts tread. He gossips with me then,
And finds it good;

Not as an eagle might, His great wings folded, be content,

To walk a little, knowing is His choice,

But as a simple man,

And I forget.

Then suddenly a call floats down

From the clear airy spaces,

The great keen, lonely heights of being.

And He who was my comrade hears the call

And rises from my side, and soars,

Deep-chanting, to the heights.

Then I remember.

And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see

Far off against the sky

The glint of golden sunlight on His wings.

A LOST WORD OF JESUS

HENRY VAN DYKE

Hear the word that Jesus spake
Eighteen centuries ago,

Where the crimson lilies blow

Round the blue Tiberian lake:
There the bread of Life he brake,

Through the fields of harvest walking
With his lowly comrades, talking

Of the secret thoughts that feed

Weary hearts in time of need.

Art thou hungry? Come and take;
Hear the word that Jesus spake.

'Tis the sacrament of labor; meat and drink divinely blest, Friendship's food, and sweet refreshment; strength and courage, joy and rest.

Yet this word the Master said,
Long ago and far away,

Silent and forgotten lay

Buried with the silent dead,-
Where the sands of Egypt spread,
Sea-like, tawny billows heaping
Over ancient cities sleeping;
While the river Nile between
Rolls its summer floods of green,
Rolls its autumn flood of red,-

There the word the Master said

Written on a frail papyrus, scorched by fire, wrinkled, torn, Hidden in God's hand, was waiting for its resurrection morn.

Hear the Master's risen word!

Delving spades have set it free,-
Wake! the world has need of thee,-

Rise, and let thy voice be heard,

Like a fountain disinterred.

Upward-springing, singing, sparkling;
Through the doubtful shadows darkling;

Till the clouds of pain and rage

Brooding, o'er the toiling age,

As with rifts of light are stirred

By the music of the word;

Gospel for the heavy-laden, answer to the labourer's cry; "Raise the stone and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and

there am I."

C. REVEALED IN THE GUIDANCE OF INDIVIDUAL LIVES

A GOOD BISHOP

ANONYMOUS, 10th Century A.D. (Old High German)

Translated by Wm. Taylor

Before St. Anno

Six were sainted

Of our holy bishops.

Like the seven stars

They shall shine from heaven.

Purer and brighter

Is the light of Anno

Than a hyacinth set in a gold ring!

This daring man

We will have for a pattern;

And those that would grow

In virtue and trustiness

Shall dress by him as at a mirror.

As the sun in the air
Between earth and heaven
Glitters to both-

So went Bishop Anno

Between God and man.

Such was his virtue in the palace

That the emperor obeyed him;

He behaved with honour to both sides

And was counted among the first barons.

In his gestures at worship

He was awful as an angel

Many a man knew his goodness.

Hear what were his manners