He was not mourning for any particular man in Jerusalem. He knew plenty of them and they all had their place in his heart. It was the city now that moved him. It was the capital of the nation, and like all capitals it had in it the nation's wealth and leadership, and behind it the heart of the nation's history. He was weeping because his mission to the nation had failed.

How must the follower of Jesus feel as he looks out over a modern city; as he realizes the mass need and dire wickedness of Chicago or Calcutta? How much have the needs of our community ever gripped and moved us?

Jesus also mourned because of the impending doom of the city. He saw its buildings in flames, its citizens killed and exiled. Have we ever seen a vision of the fate that threatens our civilization unless its cities and towns can be Christianized? It has within it the seeds of death, in its lust and greed, its poverty and disease. It has not yet wholly refused the message of Christ. It is indeed a time for tears, but for tears that drive to deeds.

THIRD DAY: Worldwide Kinship

And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation. -Acts 17: 26.

Study Paul's sense of world kinship.-Acts 17: 24-28.

Let us look back over the last twenty-four hours and survey the contribution which the community has made to our life; the things it has given to our need and comfort. It is the larger family caring for us. Consider all that it has poured into our life; the safety and security it has provided; the industry and transportation that have nourished and aided us; the schools that have brought us education; the churches that have furnished religious training and spiritual vision. This wealth coming to our life from the common hand is the unearned increment of human welfare. The com

munity made it by living together, and it gives it to us ungrudgingly. How can we rest content until everyone has the same opportunity as we to share in the common benefits? Now look out over the world. The human family has

a common life as well as a common blood. Everywhere there are groups of people living in communities for the same reasons for mutual protection, for the better performance of common work, the higher development of common progress. There are communities still living in black goat-skin tents, as Abraham and his family did. There are villagers tilling the soil on the plains of India and in the valleys of China, as on our own broad acres in 'America. There are great cities with their multitudes in every land. All communities have the same fundamental needs of food and shelter, health, education, and spiritual development. They are all facing the problems of poverty, pain, and vice. Community life is another touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Our missionary heart and our social conscience will not consent that the accident of birth shall determine the backwardness of the African, or blight the future of the tenement child; that the village in far Tibet shall be less favored than the American suburban community.

How will the success or failure of our own community to become Christian affect these other communities all over the world?

FOURTH DAY: Not a Mere Spectator

And they come to Jerusalem: and he entered into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and them that bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold the doves; and he would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel through the temple. And he taught, and said unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? but ye have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, for

all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.—
Mark 11: 15-18.

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Here was a great community wrong. The poor were being forced by the priestly monopoly to pay an exorbitant price for the things they needed for their worship in the temple. It was an established custom which went unnoticed. The priests went on praying and the elders gathered in the Sanhedrin with never a thought concerning it. The throngs came and went. The independent Galileans muttered as they went home and that was all. Jesus had been there before and watched it. At last he could stand it no longer. He acted. How long will men pass the saloon and the brothel in our communities and do nothing to remove them? Christianity has long branded their rottenness and there are other more subtle community wrongs, that need branding. Who will look for them? Who will test the community life by the consciousness of Jesus? Let us walk in spirit through the community that we know best. Write down the one outstanding condition in its life that causes us to react against it as Jesus did toward the moneychangers in the temple.

FIFTH DAY: Thou Art the Man

Do we ever unwittingly pronounce judgment upon ourselves?-Read I Sam. 12: 1-7.

A group of students were asked to write down the most non-Christian relationship that they could think of in their home community. A number of them wrote down class cleavage. They portrayed a group living in luxury in one part of the town and a group living in poverty at the other—at one end comfort and education, at the other end ignorance and misery. They declared that one half of their community did not know how the other half lived. Does one half of the world know how the other half lives?

Why should men feel that class cleavage in a "Christian" community is so wrong? India's religions have sanctified

caste; Japan still recognizes feudalism; but in the Western world democracy spreads. Is this merely the Western temperament, or is it due to the compulsion of the teachings of Jesus?

SIXTH DAY: As Others See Us

Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat? Jehovah hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.-Amos 8:.4-7.

Shall I be pure with wicked balances, and with a bag of deceitful weights? For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore I also have smitten thee with a grievous wound; I have made thee desolate because of thy sins.-Micah 6: 11-13.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full from extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside thereof may become clean also.-Matt. 23: 25, 26.

Here are bits of descriptions of community conditions. They were made long before social surveys were invented. There is a difference, however. Our social studies are mainly in the region of poverty. These seem to be in the well-to-do neighborhoods. They deal with financial magnates, ornaments of the bench, ecclesiastical dignitaries. Suppose we turned our survey methods for a while on to the homes of the wealthy or the middle class. Would the results be any different than

those which come from the regions of poverty? Why not set up some betterment agencies on the boulevard, or appoint some friendly visitors for our "best families"? How well would they stand the test? How would a college community like to see an exact portrayal of its actual moral and social conditions? Dare we face it?

SEVENTH DAY: Going Back Home

And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read.-Luke 4: 14-16.

What was it that Jesus tried to do back at Nazareth? Did he seek to help its needs on the first opportunity that came to him? Do we expect ever to help the community where we have been brought up?

There are men and women who go from small communities to great cities and win wealth or fame. Often in old age they send back some gift to their birthplace to maintain their memory, but if nothing of their life has gone into the community they have no really lasting record there.

The smallest community is big enough for all the efforts of the best-equipped man and woman. Charles Kingsley, the great English author and teacher, was not too big to invest his life in a little country village. He went there to preach when he left college, and on the day of his death he was still the rector of that village church, but he had changed that community. He has monuments of fame elsewhere, but his living presence is there. Arthur Smith, the noted writer and missionary, chose a little village in North China for his life work. He has enlightened thousands by his books, but he has lived himself into the lives of those Chinese villagers, and through them out into the life of the nation and the world.