And now his cousin stood in the pulpit. In his aspect and bearing there was a deep solemnity, which, young though he was, made him look in truth "as one that pleaded with men." He read his text, "A name which is above every name," and began with an exposition of the context, lucid, thoughtful, and evincing careful study.
Jack's thoughts wandered from the words to the speaker, and from the speaker to the surroundings, once so familiar, now so unwonted and strange to him. Presently however a word arrested him.
"My brethren," said the preacher, leaning over the pulpit in his earnestness, "have you ever thought what a wonderful thing is the love of Christ?"
"Surely," Jack said to himself, "if we have ever thought of Him at all, we have thought of that."
"I do not mean now," the preacher went on, "the love of Christ for us. I use 'love of Christ' as I use 'love of country,' 'love of friends,' to mean—not theirs for us, but ours for them. And I say, that the love of Humanity for Christ is a mystery only less than the grand, supreme mystery of all—the love of Christ for man. And the greater mystery is proved and illustrated by the less. As we may look, in its reflection, on some object too bright to gaze upon directly,—as we may measure a mountain by its shadow, so may we gain some faint conception of how 'He first loved us,' by the wondering contemplation of how men in all ages have loved Him.
"Consider. The Man called Christ Jesus lived, for three and thirty years, or less, in a little corner of the world, which He never left. Of those years thirty were spent in silence and obscurity; only for two or three did He flash into sudden fame, soon cut short by a violent death. He did not write, He did not organize, He did not rule; He only taught, and lived, and loved. Yet what has His name been in the world ever since? What is it in the world to-day?
"You will say, 'It is the Name of the Founder of our religion, through Whom we approach the Divine Majesty, and as such we hold it in reverence.' It is that; but to thousands upon thousands it is something infinitely more. It is the name of their dearest, most beloved, and most trusted personal Friend—the Name of Him whom it is their deepest joy in life to serve, their sweetest hope in death to see. It was the poet gift of voicing the deepest longings of humanity that inspired the dying song we know so well,—
"'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have crossed the bar.'
"There is one test of love, usually accounted supreme. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Freely and joyfully has Humanity poured forth her best blood for the Name of Christ. Those who have given Him this supreme proof of love we call His martyrs, or His witnesses. Other names, other religions, other causes, have had their martyrs too. Indeed, I think the word is true that all great causes have their martyrs. And I dare to think too that the wine of self-sacrificing love, though we may count it vainly spilled, cannot sink into the earth beyond His power to gather up who takes care of lost things. But I think also—nay, I know—that the martyrs of Christ stand apart from all the rest, in their immense multitude, in the joy and peace they had in suffering and in death, and in the sustaining, animating power of their love to Him for whom they died.