a happy, worth-while home? Doesn't it make a difference in the home if the father chums with his boys and the mother with her daughters, and brothers and sisters are good comrades together? And how is it in the shop, store, and factory? When foremen and employers refuse to meet their workmen on friendly terms, what have the employees a right to think? Would not real comradeship in industry go a long way toward settling difficulties in the working world? Is there anything business needs more than this? And, surely, it goes without saying that the church that is not friendly is false to its Master. It looks as though comradeship is very important wherever people work or play or worship or live together. Religion in terms of comradeship.-Away back in Chapter XIV we decided that the simple religion of Jesus is the practice of friendship. Whatever may be true of other faiths, this is true of Christianity, in simplest terms, as Jesus taught and lived it. Some churches, we fear, have gotten away from this simple ideal. If we are to follow Christ closely, we must reinterpret religion in terms of comradeship. We must discover the close comradeship between Jesus and his Father God, and with his trusted friends and disciples. Thus shall we find the power of his religion and its great chance for usefulness. We shall find the power of it in learning to live with the Spirit of God in our hearts and in sharing with Jesus his high motives and ideals of living. We shall find its opportunity according as we consecrate our friendships and carry into them the spirit of Jesus. Comradeship with God in his great Cause.-We can make no greater discovery in the world than this crowning discovery that our heavenly Father is a Godwho-is-near, that he is a comrade and coworker in all the noble purposes of our life, and that he needs us to work with him in his great Cause. Paul wrote this to his friends at Corinth: I planted the seed, Apollos watered and cared for it; but it was God who gave the increase. So that neither the planter nor the waterer is of much importance, but God who gives the increase. Now, the planter and the waterer are one in purpose; but each shall receive his own reward according to his labor. For we are fellow workers with God, and you are God's harvest-field and God's building.-1 Corinthians 3:6-. Could there be a greater opportunity than to be a "fellow worker with God"? Jesus said his Father had always been a worker. What has he been working at all this time? His great Cause is the making of the Worldthat-is-to-be, the Friendly World of which Jesus dreamed as a boy at Nazareth, and for which he lived and taught and died. With wonderful patience God has been working out his plan for a better world. It has taken all this time because foolish men have been blocking his plans. To force us to be good, and compel the world to be better, would give God no satisfaction at all, for that would be making mere machines of us. So he has to persuade men to the better way, the Jesus Way; and this is a slow, gradual process, though it is certainly sure. And just as God invites the farmer to cooperate with his natural laws of the soil, to produce the harvests we must all have each year, so too he invites all men and women of good will to be his comrades in the great Cause, and help to make the Friendly World. Comradeship with Christ in service. This will mean for each of us a closer friendship with the Master. The clue to it all is to know Jesus Christ better and to love him as our best Friend. Do you realize what he promised us if we really do this? If anyone loves me, he will attend carefully to my words. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.-John 14:23. This remarkable verse promises us that the spirit of Jesus and his Father will come and stay with anyone who loves and obeys the Master. Is this hard to believe and to understand? It means a wonderful friendship. It means, that if we will only make room for him in our inner life, Christ will gladly be the Comrade of our way. We are to live his life over again, as far as we can, by living in his spirit, by living faithfully his ideals of service and sacrifice which we have been studying. We do not really know Jesus until we discover his life secrets by living them ourselves. Then when we find the joy of helping folks in human service, and the even keener joy of suffering for others, in the fellowship of suffering we discover the experience of Jesus and find him very near. Some one has said, "The church must become a society of saviours." Herein is the holiest of all comradeships, with Jesus our Lord. Comradeship with the needy and unfortunate.— If we become comrades with Jesus, we shall before long find our way to folks who need his help and ours, the discouraged, troubled, baffled lives we shall constantly meet, there are so many of them in our world. The challenge to this sort of service is strikingly put by Robert Davis in the following lines, as he thought of the day, in the long future, when he should come face to face with Jesus Christ: |