The second period of our Lord’s ministry is one, in the main, of joyful progress and triumph, in which the test of true manliness must be more subtle than when[52] the surroundings are hostile. It consists, I think, at such times, in the careful watchfulness not to give wrong impressions, not to mislead those who are touched by enthusiasm, conscious of new life, grateful to him who has kindled that life in them.

It is then that the temptation to be all things to all men in a wrong sense—to adapt and accommodate teaching and life to a lower standard in order to maintain a hold upon the masses of average men and women who have been moved by the words of lips touched by fire from the altar of God—has generally proved too much for the best and strongest of the world’s great reformers. It is scarcely necessary to elaborate this point, which would, I think, be sorrowfully admitted by those who have studied most lovingly and carefully the lives of such men, for instance, as Savonarola or Wesley. If you will refer to a valuable work on the life of a greater than either of these, Mr. Bosworth Smith’s “Mohammed and Mohammedanism,” you will find there perhaps the best illustration which I can give you of this sad experience.

When Mohammed returns from Medina, sweeping at last all enemies out of his path, as the prophet of a new faith, and the leader of an awakened and repentant people, his biographer pauses to notice the lowering of the standard, both in his li............