hold that one being can have upon another, the nobility and the strength of the affections. Even a child grows fretful and thankless beneath an uncertain rule, under the weak indulgence that cannot refuse nor restrain; and so necessary is the sentiment of Reverence to the right working of every human heart, that childhood is not only better, but infinitely happier, under the steady government that yields nothing to the wilfulness of caprice, and makes it felt that the very tenderness which cannot be doubted is yet never administered in violation of a higher sentiment. And we all are children in reference to the One Supreme; and we all have serener hearts because with Him there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, and that, knowing both the aims and the ways of His Goodness, we know also the Severity with which He adheres to them. And as a tender and wise parent lifts a happy child into companionship with himself, and makes, not relaxed duties, but shared interests, sympathy and fellowship, its sweetest reward,—so, in His dealings with each of us, Goodness and Severity are the personal appeals, the living methods, by which the Father of Spirits works the deepest word of His grace: "Be ye holy, for I am holy:" "Be ye followers of God, even as dear children."

VI.

Ours to work out what God works in us.

PHILIPPIANS ii. 12, 13:

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His own good pleasure."

IT was the remark of a heathen moralist, that for the sake of life we lose the ends which make life worth living. In the throng of cares or pleasures, we let slip the central interest. In the variety or struggle of existence, time passes pleasantly or pressingly; and we think not of the "divine work" which the great Master-builder has appointed us to shape and finish here out of the materials given by Him. And this it is that exposes men to the wear and fret of circumstance, for it strips them of the sustaining thought that there is one grand and constant aim which they may for ever be working out with such means as God provides; and it leaves them without conscious guardianship of the sacred ark which they are to bear aloft in safety, to be beaten upon for no purpose by the mischance of the time and the wave of accident.

There are, it may be, some men so constituted that

for them it is less essential that the great aim of life should be consciously before them, to remind them of the work they have to do with the daily details of discipline: they turn naturally to the right course; they take intuitively the healthy view of circumstance; God's Spirit finds so little resistance in their nature that they take it for their own; their spontaneous affections are in unconscious harmony with the ulterior designs of His Providence; cast like others on the open sea of life, and subject to crossing winds and waves, without laborious study of the spiritual chart or painful shaping of their wills, they are found on the heavenward way. But these are the exceptions, and rather good than great, rather saints than heroes. Most men accomplish the "end for which they were born, the cause for which they came into the world," not by their spontaneous affections, but by the high strain of Conscience, by calling in the force of Principle and Will: God's Spirit strives with theirs: only, through deliberate resolve do they choose the higher guidance only through daily self-denial do they repress the encroachments of the lower nature: they have passions and self-love which would interrupt the calm flow of progressive life, and break its unity into aimless sloth, tumults and wanderings: their members are not by nature instruments of Righteousness: only, as our Lord said, by plucking out the right eye, by cutting off the right hand, can they prepare them

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selves for God's service: when they feel the solicitings of the world and the hour, there is no unenforced security that they will draw it into the direction of the final goal: when they are crossed by circumstance, there is no spiritual instinct that will turn it to easy use, and make it contribute to shape the work of God. Such is the mass of men; and for them it is essential that they keep constantly before the inward eye the great design of life, the one unchanging aim amid all the fleeting accidents-that, not trusting to spontaneous impulse or natural enterprise, on the warp appointed from above they should purposely work according to a pattern shown to them by God,

And what is this one aim in life to which all gifts, all opportunities, all times, all labours, have a common relation? There is a continuity in our days, a purpose that runs through them all, not to be perfected before the night comes, nor laid aside in our lightest hoursa scheme that we are not impatiently bent on finishing off, for we know that it will fill all existence. This great work, which continues by us in all vicissitude, and elevates us above the broken projects of the day and the hour, and draws something from every thread of life that but touches us and is gone, is the building up of ourselves after the great hopes and models that God has opened upon us. This is the business of life, the aim to be held aloft above thronging circumstance or imperious care, the temporary joy of the heart, or

the anguish of its discipline. These latter are but the tides in the affairs of men, the currents and the winds with which, favouring or adverse, purpose, faith and energy, fail not to make the port. The labour may be severer, the experiences more awful; but no man who in anything has achieved victory ever wished that the contest had been easier, the prize less nobly won; and who that escapes shipwreck regrets the sublime and terrible moments through which his soul has passed? We would not tempt God by any presumption: we are not speaking of difficulties as desirable, but as inevitable: he who seeks or braves moral danger is certainly not the one who is prepared to meet it: it was in no such vaunting spirit that Christ contemplated the daily cross of duty; nor could anything keep us from shrinking from before the face of moral pains and terrors, but the religious belief that the Framer of our being has determined for each the primary conditions within which he is to work out his own salvationthat whatever be the lot, within that lot a divine life is possible. God spoils no man's work-sets before no man an impossible problem; but gives to each the positions in which a faithful spirit, not counting the cost, may achieve peace and glory. Christ entered on his life with a knowledge of its design-with its purpose before his soul: all outward things seemed counter to that purpose-nay, let it be remembered for the comfort of those who strive to sway others for their