of the house had known what hour the thief ivould come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not." (Luke xii. 35-40.)

The parable of the virgins waiting for the bride groom, that of the consummation of the age and the last judgment, as the commentators all agree, are designed to teach that death awaits us at every moment. Death awaits us at every moment. Life is passed in sight of death. If we labor for our selves alone, for our personal future, we know that what awaits us in the future is death. And death will destroy all the fruits of our labor. Conse quently, a life for self can have no meaning. The reasonable life is different; it has another aim than the poor desires of a single individual. The reason able life consists in living in such a way that life cannot be destroyed by death. We are troubled about many things, but only one thing is necessary.

From the moment of his birth, man is menaced by an inevitable peril, that is, by a life deprived of meaning, and a wretched death, if he does not dis cover the thing essential to the true life. Now it is precisely this one thing which insures the true life that Jesus reveals to men. He invents nothing, he promises nothing through divine power; side by side with this personal life, which is a delusion, he simply reveals to men the truth.

In the parable of the husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 33-42) , Jesus explains the cause of that blindness in