ness when we fall in His service; our falls are then divine teachings and steps of progress. Self-knowledge is self-deliverance when it comes to one who is living for God. No one is so little oppressed with the care of his own reputation; he is otherwise occupied. He unveils himself, unconsciously, in the self-forgetfulness of a great pursuit. No sensitive reserves, false shame, or fear of failure, hold him back from service. He has no disguises, for he has no side ends. if, like Peter, he is weak and presumptuous, it is shown in right endeavours, in enterprises beyond his strength to which his strength will grow. And if, like Nathanael, he shrinks alarmed, with offended pride, at a word of undue praise" How knowest thou me ?"-he yields at once, like Nathanael, to a spiritual presence that meets and transcends his own.

Even

The most genuine sign of a religious sensibility which passes into the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, is the compassionate heart which cannot separate the sense of Fatherhood from the affections and the obligations of Brotherhood. The fellowship of love is conscientious, and with the joy takes up the duties, the burden and the cross, of its divine relationship. It rejoices with those who rejoice, and weeps with those who weep. It is pained by human suffering, as though the blow was on our own breast; troubled by misery's dark despair, as though the shadow was on our own soul; stricken and moved by the evil that is

in the world, as though the responsibility was all with us, and ours the place of charge in our Father's house of that compassionate Brother who would bear every man's sins and carry every man's sorrows. To the love which draws towards Christ, inspiring the conscience and the will, nothing is too great, nothing is too small. In the simplicity of service it makes the Beatitudes its own, having the blessing that is on the merciful, on the peace-maker, on the pure in heart and the meek in spirit, on the mourning for woes that are not our own, on the hunger and thirst for the inexhaustible things of God.

For it was not without deep significance that Christ pronounced on the seeker after God in whom was no self-seeking, the blessing offered to the first Israel in the vision of the night, and lost through guile : "Thou shalt see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." For is not such a heart the place where the communications of earth and heaven are carried on, whence the prayer and the sigh go up, to which angels of grace come down? Is not all life, to such a heart, as the ladder set up on earth, reaching unto heaven, with the divine messengers passing to and fro, and the Lord God standing above it? Is not, to such a heart, every suggestion of love a whisper from the Mercy-seat, every prompting of conscience a mandate from the Holy Spirit? And whether to any one life here is for

few or for many days, whether the ladder of ascent is long visible from this its lower side, or early taken up and lost to sight, what is that to him or us, if only whilst still it rests upon the earth the heavenly messengers come and go! If only at every overture from God we close with Him at once, not making terms, like Jacob, but leaving all with Him, like Christ,-if only as each angel in succession presents his hand he has his hand accepted, to lead us where they point,— the angel of the divine Benignity, who spreads our table, and, filling our cup with the water of life, our heart with the wine of love, invites natural thankfulness to rise upwards into spiritual trust,—the angels of Chastening, who baptize with the Holy Spirit and with cleansing fire,—the angels of Faith and Hope,— the angel of Charity, ever nearest to the throne of God, if these are honoured and entertained, as one would entertain angels, not unawares, then what matters it from what step of the ascent-whether when age is laden with all the spoils of earth, or with young eyes yet glistening in their first wonder-the last angel, whose face towards earth is the face of Death, but turned heavenwards burns with immortal life, bears us within the veil, to the kindred of our spirit within our Father's house!

IV.

Grounds of Trust in God.

MARK iv. 40:

"And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?"

IN our human relations, to withhold confidence. where confidence has been deserved, is justly held to be one of the surest signs of an ignoble temper. Now how far, according to this rule, are we honourably bound to have trust in God? How far are our relations to Him analogous to human relations, so that distrust, want of faith, is of that kind which in regard to a fellow-man would, with all generous natures, reflect deep discredit upon ourselves? For this is the ultimate ground of appeal. Religion is a personal relation-the relation of person to Person. It is not simply a state of human character; that is Morality: it is our whole inward and outward life, as that life is sustained, coloured and inspired by our personal relations with God. Whatever secret strength would pass away from us, whatever hues of rich colour would be taken out of our existence, whatever hopes would have

no support, if God was nothing to us, and we were simply left alone with our own nature-all that belongs to Religion. Without Religion we might have all that Philosophy, all that a noble or prudential Morality, all that Knowledge, can bestow; we should lose all that depends on Faith. For Religion carries us quite beyond isolated human nature and its laws: it gives us a Heavenly Arm to lean on, an infinite Life to draw from: it is reliance in regard to all that is yet unknown legitimately growing out of our own experiences. Faith is no arbitrary demand that God makes on man: He establishes His claim upon it, before He asks it from us.

Faith, however different in its nature from logical certainty, has yet its own sufficient evidence, and in sensibility to this evidence mainly consists spiritual discernment as distinguished from intellectual clearness. Christ could not reasonably have looked for undisturbed hearts in the disciples when the storm was raging and the ship was sinking, unless he had previously given them grounds of trust, which ought to have carried the conviction that he was in God's keeping until his destinies were fulfilled, that Messiah's mission could not be accomplished by his perishing there in the Lake of Galilee. Their profession of discipleship implied so much, and gave him a right to complain of their "little faith" in a moment of natural terror and alarm.

Now, has God made for Himself a clear right to