from it. But they did not need to he pillars of society to see the truth and speak its message. Indeed, the chances are decidedly against a pillar of society ever seeing or speaking the truth. That is left for peasants and farmers and tramps and nobodies.
Nineteen hundred years ago, when John spoke his burning words by the Jordan side, and when for three years a carpenter's son from Nazareth continued the work too soon laid down by that rude prophet of the wilderness, a time had come in human history which was destined to try men's souls, to test the worth of all that was. That is precisely what took place. The temple and synagogue could not escape that testing. Not even the power of Rome could escape it. Neither Pharisee nor Sadducee, neither Herod nor Pilate could escape it. It was there. A new page was turned in the life of man, and only they who could read the language on that page, only they who were in harmony with the spirit of that new age, only they whose souls responded to the emerging hopes and aspirations of the human organism could enter and enjoy its boundless beauty and blessedness.
The same thing is here today. A time is here that tries men's souls and shows of what stuff they are made, that lays bare the secrets of human life and discloses the hideous deformity that an
