The  second  task  of  the  Church  will  be  learned  from
the  second  element  of  the  mission  of  Jesus  as  fulfilled
by  Him.  He  served  in  love.  When  He  is  not  teach-
ing I  find  Him  working,  and  His  labor  is  always  a  labor
of  lov?e  in  the  service  of  the  sick,  the  poor,  and  the
weak.  So  did  He  fulfill  His  mission  of  redemption  and
renewal.  Wherever  disease  had  worked  its  ruin  and
sin  had  left  its  corruption,  wherever  the  injustice  of
man  had  wrought  its  iniquities  in  human  conditions
with  their  resulting  limitations  and  confinements  of  the
free  spirits  of  men,  —  there  the  gracious  hand  of  our
Lord  was  revealed  and  the  arm  of  His  power  made
bare  to  touch  with  blessing  and  to  lift  with  power  into
newness  of  life  and  freedom  of  spirit.  The  significant
fact  about  the  miracles  of  Jesus  is  not  the  question  of
their  supernaturalness,  but  is  the  spirit  in  which  they
were  wrought,  the  purpose  which  they  served,  the  goal
toward  which  they  manifestly  reached.  They  were,  in-
deed, revelations  of  divine  power,  made  not  so  much
that  we  might  know  that  there  is  a  divine  power  —  for
the  world's  great  doubt  has  not  been  here  —  but  that
we  might  know  to  what  ends  the  divine  power  moves,
whither  in  our  outspread  human  life  the  divine  power
bends  in  pity,  what  in  the  far  horizons  of  God's  supreme
purpose  is  the  ultimate  goal  toward  which  that  divine
power  shall  come.  This  it  is  that  was  revealed  in  the
miracles  that  Jesus  wrought;  and  because  nothing  less
than  this  great  and  infinite  truth  is  revealed  in  them,  my
mind  finds  no  difficulty  in  the  acceptance  of  their  his-
toricity. To  make  men  know  and  feel  this  is  sufficient
cause  for  the  bringing  into  play  upon  this  old  world  of
ours,  of  forces  which  the  ongoing  of  the  ages  has  not
demanded,  acting  under  laws  which  the  intelligence  of
the  ages  has  not  known.  This  then  is  the  mission  of


ANNIVERSARY    EXERCISES.  II

the  Church  in  its  second  task;  to  serve  as  Jesus  served.
