the sheep from the goats, but also in order that He may reign for
ever and gather into the fellowship of His love and the community of
His joys all who love and trust Him here. These are the triple
phases of our Lord's activity suggested by the three great moments.

III. Lastly, notice the triple attitude which we should assume to
Him and to them.

For the first, the cradle, with its consequence of the Cross, our
response is clinging faith, grateful memory, earnest following, and
close conformity. For the second, the Ascension, with its
consequence of a Christ that lives and labours for us, and is with
us, our attitude ought to be an intense realisation of the fact of
His present working and of His present abode with us. The centre of
Christian doctrine has, amongst average Christians, been far too
exclusively fixed within the limits of the earthly life, and in the
interests of a true and comprehensive grasp of all the blessedness
that Christianity is capable of bringing to men, I would protest
against that type of thought, earnest and true as it may be within
its narrow limits, which is always pointing men to the past fact of
a Cross, and slurs over and obscures the present fact of a living
Christ who is with us, and in us. One difference between Him and all
other benefactors and teachers and helpers is this, that, as ages go
on, thicker and ever-thickening folds of misty oblivion wrap them,
and their influence diminishes as new circumstances emerge, but this
Christ's power laughs at the centuries, and is untinged by oblivion,
and is never out of date. For all others we have to say--'having
served his generation,' or a generation or two more, 'according to
the will of God, he fell on sleep.' But Christ knows no corruption,
and is for ever more the Leader, and the Companion, and the Friend,