our neighbours, and for the whole world.

For that is another great lesson which the Bible teaches us--hope for
the world. Men say to us, "This world has always gone on ill, and
will always go on so. Tyrants and knaves and hypocrites have always
had the power in it; idlers have always had the enjoyment of it;
while the humble, and industrious, and godly, who would not foul
their hands with the wicked ways of the world, have been always
laughed at, neglected, oppressed, persecuted. The world," they say,
"is very bad, and we cannot live in it without giving way a little to
its badness, and going the old road."

But he who, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, has hope,
can answer "Yes--and yet no." "Yes--we agree that the world has gone
on badly enough: perhaps we think the world worse than it thinks
itself; for God's Spirit has taught us to see sin, and shame, and
ruin, in many a thing which the world thinks right and reasonable.
And yet," says the true Christian man, "although we think the world
worse than anyone else thinks it, and are more unhappy than anyone
else about all the sin, and injustice, and misery we see in it, we
have the very strongest faith--we are perfectly certain--we are as
sure as if we saw it coming to pass here before us, that the world
will come right at last. For the Bible tells us that the Son of God
is the king of the world; that He has been the master and ruler of it
from the beginning. He, the Bible tells us, condescended to come
down on earth and be born in the likeness of a poor man, and die on
the cross for this poor world of His, that He might take away the
sins of it." "Behold the Lamb of God," said John the Baptist, "who
takes away the sin of the world." How dare we, who call ourselves
Christians, we who have been baptized into His name, we who have