then with pertinacity and courage, struggle and endeavour to perform it, and to perform it not merely with the organs and senses of the body, but in every recess and activity of the soul. The willing to do God's will must involve with the followers of Christ what it involved in His own Gethsemane experience, when recovering from the cry of alarm and revulsion that His agony, personal and sympathetic, had wrung from Him, He amends His prayer, perfects His supplication in the sacredest sentence any lips can ever utter, "Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt." While this conception of duty necessitates such a demand on the will not merely on the passing wish, but the deepest, abiding, controlling volitions of the soul,—it has also a comforting aspect. For it describes duty not so much as an outward achievement as we sometimes picture it:

""Tis not what a man does,

But what he strives with earnestness to do
That honours him: the striving is the glory,

Not the wreath of fading bay that rings the victor's brow."

(3) The willing to do God's will is the way to the knowledge of the Truth. "He that willeth to do His will shall know of the teaching." Sometimes we say "there is no royal road to learning," but remembering James' apostolic declaration, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," we rather conclude in the light of Christ's teaching now before us, that the only way to learning is the royal way.

Probably we shall easily agree that Saint Paul attained a knowledge of Truth immeasurably beyond that which most men reach. His sermon on Mars-hill, his argument with the Corinthians for the resurrection, indeed the whole sweep of his great intellect over the wide domain of Christian truth often makes us feel that we are almost as far beneath him as he felt he was far beneath The Christ. What was the beginning of this great apostolic understanding of truth? What its initial stage? Can we find him in the porch of this vast temple which he so searchingly and so successfully explored? We can. Here is the beginning, here the initial stage, here he is in the porch; "Lord,

what wilt Thou have me to do?" That desire is the grand inlet to the light which filled and flooded his great nature. So Paul found Christ's words true.

This principle our Lord says is of universal application. "If any man willeth to do His will." These words are far reaching, indeed, limitless in their bearing. Glancing first like a ray of dawn on the early disciples, their full morning light encompassed the apostle Paul, and their noon-day splendour bathes us in the inspirations of its comfort and hope. To the orthodox and to the heretic, to the little child and to the cultured sage, to the happy believer and to the honest sceptic, to the loyal Christian in the church and to the bewildered, perplexed, baffled enquirer in the world the assurance is borne, that where there is the genuine willing to do God's will there shall come the unveiling of the face of Truth and the unfolding of the great mysteries of destiny. The "shalls" of Christ are not the "perhapses" and the "may bes" of human guessers after Fact; they are the irrevocable predictions of Him who spake as man never spake, for whom God challenges our attentive and believing heed with the words, "This is My beloved Son; hear Him." And He says, without peradventure, or any other condition than that of genuine obedience, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching."

(4) This is explained by the fact that intuition comes by sympathy, and discovery by experiment. The vision of God is vouchsafed to the pure in heart. It was the apostle of love whose eye quickly discerned the Master when the others were in doubt as to who He was. The lips of him who loved most were the lips that could soonest and most certainly say, "It is the Lord." So is it with all truth as it is with God and with The Christ. And such a willing to do God's will as we have been considering implies sympathy, implies fellowship, implies affinity. Such deep, constant internal volition is at once a result and a sign of a sympathy which apprehends what it loves. Love, not logic, is the safe guide into the arcana of truth about God, for "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him." Such willing to do God's will as Christ here enjoins is a sure and lofty token

of love. For if we love we keep the commandments of the loved one. Moreover, there is in practical obedience to God's will the discovery that comes by experiment. The child learns to walk by walking; and not less surely the obedient learns the ways of God by following them step by step as far as he sees them. Thus each step prepares the way for the next and the next, as the goals of yesterday become the starting posts of to-day. "Then shall ye know, if ye follow on to know the Lord." "Thy word is tried, therefore I love it." This is the experience not of such as simply "try" any Divine teaching in the crucible of exegesis or of theologic study, but as "try" it by putting it to the test in the joys and sorrows, the trials and temptations and duties of our daily life. So with the "word" about Prayer, about Work, about Love. Each one becomes what Peter found Christ Himself was—a tried and precious stone in the habitation of the soul. Do the duty that lies nearest to thee, so thou shalt see all that needs to be seen now, and shalt in the right time see all that can be seen by the eye of man when no longer mortal, "he shall know even as he is known." Do such duty immediately, unreservedly. For every such duty shall be to thee as the rung of a ladder, as sacred and more lasting than Jacob saw.

EDITOR.

CHRIST, NOT SYSTEMS; TRUE CHRISTIANITY.-"As our interpretations of the Bible are not necessarily the Bible, so no Christian system is Christ, and some systems called by His name have no connection at all with Him. But then men do not make these distinctions, and discrimination is not easy. Here is Christianism like the old tower on the plain of Shinar. A stranger draws near to see what the children of men are building. He inquires. He is answered by a confusion of sounds and incongruous voices. Each voice may have some tone of Paradise; each dialect may have numerous signs and sounds of Eden; but the effect of the whole upon the ear of the stranger is this one impression-Babel. Do not let men hear so much about my views (for of what consequence are they?), our principles, our church, our denomination, our fathers, our forefathers, our traditions, our theology; for amid these sounds of 'I' and 'me,' 'he' and 'him,' 'they' and 'them,' 'me' and 'us,' 'theirs' and 'ours,' men lose the name which is above every name, the name of Jesus Christ the Lord,-the only name by which a sinner can be saved,—the one name by which order is to be brought into the midst of confusion, light into darkness, harmony into discord, life into death, and salvation to a ruined world."-SAMUEL MARTIN.

Germs of Thought.

The Gospel of Christ and the Brotherhood of Men.

"THAT THE GENTILES ARE FELLOW-HEIRS, AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE SAME BODY, AND FELLOW-PARTAKERS OF THE PROMISE IN CHRIST JESUS THROUGH THE GOSPEL."-Ephesians iii. 6.

It is the genius of the Gospel that it unites all its believers in one common brotherhood. Its grand truths depend on no argument, on no talent. They are their own power; influencing the souls of men by their own inherent virtue. The Gospel of the love of God in Christ Jesus is no mere adaptation; it is an absolute necessity for the life of the soul of man. As the rain is to the earth, so is the Gospel to humanity. The Gospel is Christ, and Christ is the Light of the world. His "star" appeared in the east; men saw it and wondered; for its radiance far outshone the constellated hosts. A glorious emblem of Him who is creation's Lord-the Divine Man-who is the Head of all things unto His Church. Those ancient sages, the first-fruits of the Gentiles, came to Bethlehem with their offerings; they bowed and worshipped Him who was "born King." "Born King," "that in all things He might have the pre-eminence; for it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell. And through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens" (Col. i. 20). Here are conquests such as earth's mightiest warriors never won. These are triumphs of the power of Christ Jesus through the Gospel." "The fulness of times" revealed the fulness of the Father's love, "that He might gather together in one all things in Christ." The Jew and the Gentile, the bond and the free, were now to be one in Christ. Creedal animosities

were to pass away, and sects and parties were to become united in one common brotherhood. Henceforth their voices were to mingle in one glorious harmony in singing the song of redeeming love. For Jew and Gentle there was now to be

I. FELLOW-HEIRSHIP. Those who were once afar off were now to be brought near.

1. By title. Christ Himself is the title-deed. The Jews were heirs by being the seed of Abraham; but the Gentiles were now made heirs by the gift of His only begotten Son. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Rom. viii. 32.) Shall the petty jealousies of sectarianism, and the grovelling pleasures, and the cankering covetousness of the world engross our every thought and care, when such an "unspeakable gift" is offered us? Shall we prefer the base and sordid things of the passing hour, to that which is noble, that which is pure, and that which is eternal ?

Titles to earthly possessions may be disputed and proved invalid; but Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." History tells of a monarch who had assembled his nobles before him and demanded by what right and title they held their lands and properties. Instantly a hundred swords were snatched from their sheaths and glimmered in the air; and with one voice the nobles answered, "By these we won them, and by these we will hold them." But we Gentiles have a far higher, holier, and more enduring title, if we have "Christ in us the hope of glory." Eternal ages shall never invalidate this title, for it is the immutable gift of the eternal God Himself. This fellow-heirship is not only by title but—

2. By possession. "The promise in Christ, through the Gospel," is the immutable Word of God. It includes both time and eternity; "the life which now is, and that which is to come." Christ is the Father's "unspeakable gift"; "in whom, having believed, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of His glory" (Eph. i. 14). If we have the indwelling