A Singular Change of Fashion

 "The world is gone after Him." John 12:19.

        It is not often that fashion originates in the provinces. It is not often that the metropolitan press sustains the reputation of a book or singer on the authority of provincial journals. It is the lower that take their fashion from the higher. Imagine Belgravia eagerly inquiring for the latest culture of Bohemia! Yet here is a complete transformation of the higher by the lower. When Christ came He was the opposite of the fashion. Cecsar was the fashion. They were the extremes of the social ladder. Caesar was proud; Christ was lowly. Caesar was sceptred; Christ was scourged. Caesar had the crown of empire; Christ had the crown of thorns. Yet Christ is now at the top, and Caesar is nowhere. That IS what Paul means by "the fashion of this age passeth away." "The fashion of this age" means "the fashion of the Roman Empire." We have lived to see it pass; we have lived to see its opposite enthroned. There has come a new ideal of manliness - a reversed ideal. The chaplet once was woven for the men who strike; it is now wreathed for the men who bear. The mountain virtues are the things once called poor-spirited - courage in sorrow, meekness in trial, mercy in judgment, peacemaking in strife, purity in temptation; these are our patterns on the modern mount.
       And they are all from Thee, O Jesus! Thou hast changed the fashion of the world, nay, the fashion of my dream. I have come to admire what I once despised - all through Thee. It is my love for Thee that has changed my standard of greatness. It is because I have been down with Thee in Gethsemane; it is because I have climbed with Thee the steep of Calvary. It is not the altered fashion that has glorified Thee; it is the glory of Thee that has altered the fashion. I pass along the old road and behold great changes. I see no decrepit children put out to die. I meet no helpless invalids left to starve. I encounter no demoniacs walking neglected amid the tombs. I behold no deaf or blind crowding the highway for want of a home. I find no slave standing in the market for sale. I miss, above all, the streaming throng that used to follow the wrestlers in the ring. And when I ask, ''Where are they all gone - these once admiring crowds? " some pilgrim of the way points to the road Thou hast taken, and says "the world has gone after Him"