Such was Christ.  He stood in the world, the Light of the world, to which all sparks of light gradually gathered.  He stood in the presence of impurity, and men became pure.  Note this in the history of Zaccheus.  In answer to the invitation of the Son of man, he says, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have done wrong to any man I restore him fourfold.”  So also the Scribe, “Well, Master, thou hast well said, there is one God, and there is none other than He.”  To the pure Saviour, all was pure.  He was lifted up on high, and drew all men unto Him.

Lastly, all situations are pure to the pure.  According to the world, some professions are reckoned honourable, and some dishonourable.  Men judge according to a standard merely conventional, and not by that of moral rectitude.  Yet it was in truth, the men who were in these situations which made them such.  In the days of the Redeemer, the publican’s occupation was a degraded one, merely because low base men filled that place.  But since He was born into the world a poor, labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable.  To the man who feels that “the king’s daughter is all glorious within,” no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure.

There are three words which express almost the same thing, but whose meaning is entirely different.  These are, the gibbet, the scaffold, and the cross.  So far as we know, none die on the gibbet but men of dishonourable and base life.  The scaffold suggests to our minds the noble deaths of our greatest martyrs.  The cross was once a gibbet, but it is now the highest name we have, because He hung on it.  Christ has purified and ennobled the cross.  This principle runs through life.  It is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the situation.  The slave may be a freeman.  The monarch may be a slave.  Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.

From all this subject we learn to understand two things.  Hence we understand the Fall.  When man fell, the world fell with him.  All creation received a shock.  Thorns, briars, and thistles, sprang up.  They were there before, but to the now restless and impatient hands of men they became obstacles and weeds.  Death, which must ever have existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another, became a curse; the sting of death was sin—­unchanged in itself, it changed in man.  A dark, heavy cloud, rested on it—­the shadow of his own guilty heart.

Hence too, we understand the Millennium.  The Bible says that these things are not to be for ever.  There are glorious things to come.  Just as in my former illustration, the alteration of the eye called new worlds into being, so now nothing more is needed than to re-create the soul—­the mirror on which all things are reflected.  Then is realized the prophecy of Isaiah, “Behold, I create all things new,” “new heavens