we be ready to become the supports of whatever sorrows need our sympathies—to grasp the hands that hang down and raise them up-to place ourselves in love and self-forgetfulness near the weak and the desolate. We can only give what we have; we cannot give to another the strength that is not our own. "Labour," says St. Paul, "that ye may have to give to him that needeth." "Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." The sympathy of two dejected, repining minds is but a commerce of self-love. It was he whose own foot was firm upon the rushing wave who was both able and willing to stretch forth his hand to the fearful and the sinking. But no man whose heart is Christian will make the hope and courage he desires for himself a condition of his sympathy, his helpfulness towards others. If the strong man turns away from the weakness of the weak, he only proves that such strength as he has is hardness and self-concentration, far indeed from tender reverence for God's holy purposes, and the spirit of him who would not quench smoking flax, or break a bruised reed. If "it is more blessed to give than to receive," the blessedness of having is in being able and willing to give.

Children, then, of the God of all comfort, and Brothers of every suffering man, we live true to our spiritual lineage, to the family bonds of Christian hearts, only as we go to our Father for light and strength, and "turn not away from our own flesh," but share what is ours, and take of theirs, as God has given to each for the sake of all.

XXII.

Loving God with our Strength.

his

I COR. xvi. 13:

"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit ye like men, be strong."

A MAN of strong character is one whose Will rules powers, so that such energies as he has are habitually submissive to the clear purpose of his spirit. And to this kind of strength, which lies entirely within the province of self-government, every man may approach, however little natural force he may have comparatively with other men. The strength that is required is moral strength, and has no relation to another man's capacities, but solely to our own. Some natures, indeed, much more readily than others, seem to have all their forces under the command of what is highest in them; but the question for each of us is, not whether we are more or less than others, nor whether the work given to us is lighter or severer, but how can we best improve the gifts of God committed to ourselves-how introduce a full harmony of action. into the constituents of our own being, each part of us serving in its rightful place.

A clear, fixed aim, and a force of will that compels the various faculties to steady work in its service, these constitute, for each individual, strength of character. For the difficulty of reaching true strength of character is not in great exertions, but in unity of life. Nothing is more common than great force in some one direction-in some one inclination, passion or faculty: nothing is more rare than a strong man, if by the man you mean the whole man, the symmetry of our entire being, the frame of our life complete through that which every joint supplieth. The men whom the world takes for strong are for the most part only one-sided-just as to most minds the half of a truth is far more telling than the whole of it, and to modify the impression by giving the other half will seem to round it off to comparative tameness. Vehement language coming out of half-knowledge and a blind impulse, seems fraught with more vigour than full, just, discriminating speech; and a man who sees every side of a subject will appear more feeble than the man who, because he sees but one side of it, can speak impetuously and strike with unqualified force. How easy would it be to be strong in some one direction or proclivity of our nature, or in the vigorous prosecution of single interests! How easy, for instance, to be strong in the conduct of worldly business, if we might settle down our whole powers upon it, and had never to lift our soul from its pursuit! How difficult

is it to combine this with every other sentiment that becomes a man-to infuse into this vigour of business the fervent spirit serving God, so that, whilst the hand of diligence maketh rich, the heart and its treasures have no earthliness in them! How easy might it be to be strong in Religion, in the devotion of our souls to holiness and truth, if Duty centred in the private thoughts and could be carried on in solitude-if it required no struggle with conflicting things, no trained wisdom to discern our way amid a thousand complications-if asceticism was strength-if monkery was strength-if the anchorite might go to his cell, and had finished his Christian work when prayers, aspirations and unearthly desires, had floated in ghostly array through the uninterrupted meditations of his spirit! All that is casy to any one who chooses to give himself to it. But how difficult is it to be strong in a real devotedness to Goodness, Purity and Truth, amid the contradiction of circumstance and the opposing ways of men-to shape the forms of life after models in the soul-to transfer unmutilated our own sentiments into our own demeanour-to live with men as they are and part with no ideal—to lose no vision, disturb no fountain of peace-to be strong in Christ's interpretation of strength-a physician among the sick-whole among the unsound-spiritual among the worldly-living with God in the midst of crowds-full of love and thought for the world when alone with God!