spirit in us-when we work, not for heavenly wages, but from the kingdom of heaven within. We shall then go through strait gates and narrow ways, and take up every cross, not because these things entitle us to rewards, but because they meet us on the path which Love must pass along. The rich youth-the thirst of whose soul for eternal life his moralities did not altogether satiate, for his question was perhaps some indication of a spiritual unrest out of which at last loftier sacrifice, a freer self-surrender, a purer desire for goodness and for God, might come-from the want of that leading spirit, could not accept a plain direction from the Master at whose feet he kneeled: the Master himself, because he had that spirit, could find room in his heart, weighted as it was, to love that faint-souled man who was grieved to do wrong, though he could not yet do right.

There is nothing we ought more to desire than the power of separating from our life the spirit that should mould our life, so as clearly to discern how far that spirit is unclothed, how far we are from having put on the Lord Jesus.

It is true that this great power of Love is not a matter that is immediately at our own command. We are not responsible for the quantity of it that God has naturally endowed us with, but only for the conscientiousness that cherishes and fulfils what we have. It will grow, if we will let it bear its fruit. Different types

of Love there will always be. Passionate ardours, enthusiastic affections, mighty fires of impulse, a man does not create for himself. God asks only for what He gives. Yet we can do much, of our own will, to concentrate the warmth of our nature, and when we are musing the fire will burn. Some are born without the force of feeling that carries others into rapt devotion towards God and measureless sacrifice for man. If Love, then, is indeed the spring and the beginning, for Conscience itself cannot act until Feeling presents it with something to choose and to act upon,-since we cannot commence before the beginning, it might seem that we were spiritually helpless where Love was naturally weak, and that the vast spiritual differences among men were simply matters of original endowment. But the spiritual difference of men is not in natural affection, and is not in genius, widely different as these are, but in the Conscience and in the Will, and these are responsible for cherishing and for sanctifying the constitutional materials of feeling and of perception that God has given. Whether a man is marked. by nature for a Spiritualist or a Realist, a Mystic or a Moralist, a Saint in soul or a Hero in action, an increasing volume of Love will find its channel in any of these courses, if the Will is pure and true. Nor, if the spiritual forces are faithful, will these forms of Love keep separate; they will tend to pass into one another and kindle the whole nature to a glow; for if "the end

of the commandment is Charity," it is not the charity that has sympathy for everything and moral indignation against nothing, but "charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."

The Love that is rooted in Conscience and in God, living daily in the works that are as its daily bread of life, will every day grow richer in inspiration and expression, and make itself and all things new.

XII.

No Supererogation in Christian Service.

LUKE xvii. 10:

"So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do."

It is essential to a constraining sense of what it is "our Duty to do," that the expressions of character should be felt to emanate from principles that admit of no discretionary obedience; that the lighter, higher or finer graces, which seem rather spontaneous than obligatory, should, when distinctly contemplated, be scen to rest, not on a basis of sentiment, but on a basis of conscientiousness. We are apt to count as ornament, superadded charm or drapery, styles and forms of Goodness which to a truer discernment would appear necessary products of its essential spirit; and so the few grand roots of perfectness, instead of fully flowering in our nature, issue in moralities that are rather of a civil than of a spiritual order, whilst all beyond is regarded as of a voluntary decorative character, or classed with virtues of imperfect obligation.

Many of the clearest claims of conscience, of the most legitimate fruits of right-mindedness, are thus stripped of the binding force of Duties, and referred to some vague sentiment whose demands have no authoritative enforcement. It is not seen that the utmost beauty of Holiness is rooted in the very nature of Holiness, inseparable from a dutiful obedience to the simple requirements of its spirit. Perhaps the most remarkable example of this tendency is the manner in which men narrow the claims of Justice, and whilst overlooking all the finer suggestions of her spirit, yet escape from themselves, and from the world, the imputation of unrighteousness. We often assume to be acting from loftier feelings partaking of the nature of Generosity, whilst in fact we have reached only to a most slender appreciation of what simple Justice would require. We confuse our ideas of Goodness by supposing that it springs from a great variety of sources, some of which are more essential than the others, and that it has a great variety of forms, some of which are works of supererogation, moulded by an unsubstantial sentiment, the absence or the violation of which involves no forfeiture of righteousness; whilst in truth all possible goodness, the moment it is distinctly conceived, takes the obligation of duty, and consists simply in being true in action and in feeling to the full claims of the relations in which we stand. Justice, to one who discerns what on all sides is due from him, in his