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THE DANGER OF SENTIMENTALISM.

talk about his parents in polysyllables, and thus make a fool's ineloquent speech about them, who has yet not had the grace to obey a single commandment. Take away your poetry, eat it and choke yourself with it-it is a lie. We seek for one poetry only, and that the blossoming and the fragrance, and the fruitfulness of real duty and obedience.

There is also another danger which many young men would do well to take heed to, and that is the danger of reciting poetry and living prose. Be very careful, you devotees of poetry and you reciters and treasurers of miles of jingling rhyme, take care that you do not recite your poetry and live your sapless prose. It would be a disastrous irony, it would be the most perfect and cruel sarcasm. Rather on the other hand say no poetry but live much. If it must come to a choice of one or the other, let this course Be mine to live the poetry, to prove the sublimity by many a gentle, loving action. If I can unite the two and be as eloquent in service, so be it; but if the one only can be adopted, let me urge you to adopt the eloquence of loving obedience and noble self-sacrifice.

How possible it is to sing hymns and to be acting blasphemies. It is possible. Consider that for one moment, because at the first blush it would seem to be utterly beyond the bounds of possibility to sing in an oratorio and then to act dishonestly, to sing an anthem and then to tell a lie, to utter a hymn and then to perpetrate a cruelty. The poetry is at the wrong end in such cases. O let me have prose climbing up into poetry and not poetry sinking down into contemptible prose; see to it that though you have many crucifixes in the house you have a cross in the heart, though you compare your beloved to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariot, you also transfer that love into noble charity and sacrifice and sweet service which will benefit mankind, as well as enchant their fancy and please their literary taste.

Not only is this power of making parables and comparisons a joy and a danger, it is also a responsibility. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. If the Master is beautiful, so must the servant be. Shall the Master be a sweet rose and the servant a stinging nettle? Is that not very often the case? Shall the master be a fruitful tree making the city glad

and the servant be as a upas, casting its deadly shade upon all living things? Let us understand that every compliment we pay to Christ is an obligation we lay upon ourselves if we are his faithful followers. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure, that is the sacred law. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. We are to be transformed by the beauty we admire. This is the great law, namely, we shall be like him, for-mark the reason—we shall see him as he is. The sight will be transfiguring: to look at beauty will be to be made beautiful; to see God will be to be made divine, the fair vision shall make us also fair, otherwise it is wasted upon us, and we do not really see it. It will be impossible to see Christ as he is without being transformed into his beauty. But do we not all see Christ as he is when we come into the sanctuary? Far from it. We see sections of Christ, phases of Christ, we hear something about Christ, but we do not see the whole Christ in the absoluteness of his integrity and the ineffableness of his beauty, or we should be caught in a transfiguring and transforming power, and the very visage of our face would be changed.

The power of Compare your

Here, then, are abundant lessons for us all. comparison is to be cherished and developed. living Saviour to all things beautiful, make every flower of the field into a parable, the summer will grow too few flowers to set forth all his beauties. Go out this coming summer and attach to every flower some name that shall indicate some beauty in your Lord; watch for the coming stars, and according to the beauty of each name it, and, so to speak, baptise it in the Lord's name, that when you see it again it may remind you of some high ecstasy of the soul. All that is wise, beautiful, legitimate, it gives ennoblement to the mind and enlargement to the whole sphere of the imagination, it refines and elevates the taste by great purification and enrichment, but do not rest there. Not every one that saith unto me "Lord, Lord," shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Are we not all witnesses to the wasting power of rapture, to the enervating reaction of high rhapsody in any service? Have we not been on the hill of transfiguration and desired to

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THE PRACTICAL SIDE.

build tabernacles there, and never to come down into the cold and tumultuous world again? Mark the danger. Life is real, sad, tragical, a great daily pain, as well as an occasional rapture and a high realisation of the noblest intellectual conceptions and experiences.

In comparing Christ with things beautiful, noble, grand, we are writing a heavy indictment against ourselves if we profess to be his followers, and do not rise to the grandeur of the occasion. Shall we be found in the king's procession who have about us anything that is mean, worthless, vile, corrupting? Shall we not make it our endeavour to be in some sort worthy of the royal procession and worthy of its high meaning? Herein is the responsibility arising from the power we have of seeing the beautiful and acknowledging it. This is our calling in Christ Jesus as he was so are we in this world. Men are to take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of him. As he who passes through a garden of roses brings with him part of the fragrance breathed from the beauteous flowers, so we who come forth from the fellowship of Christ are to show somewhat of the radiance of his countenance, and to speak somewhat with the eloquence of his accent. This is the incarnation which he desires at our hands, not only to compare him with things royal and beautiful but to incarnate him in actions more eloquent than the pomp of speech or the melody of music.

Who can carry out that high vocation? Who would not rather sit in his garden and make parables and blow them from the pipe of his imagination like gilded bubbles into the summer air? That would be easy, that would be a pious luxury; but to cut off the right hand, to pluck out the right eye, to slay the inner offence, to test the soul as by fire, who can submit to this inexorable discipline? And yet, if we fail here it will but go to the aggravation of the account against us that we have compared our Saviour to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariot, and have talked about him in foaming poetry, but have lived mean, petty, worthless lives. The God of the heavens give us wisdom.

LX.

HEROD HEARS OF CHRIST.

Matthew xiv. 1-14.

1. At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus,

2. And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.

3. For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife.

4. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her.

5. And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.

6. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.

7. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask.

8. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.

9. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her.

10. And he sent and beheaded John in the prison.

II. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel; and she brought it to her mother.

12. And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it and went and told Jesus.

13. When Jesus heard of it he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities.

14. And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion towards them, and he healed their sick.

I particular juncture the

T must not be supposed that Herod had not heard of Jesus

There

of Jesus made a new impression upon the ruler's mind. are some hours that are historical, although the very things we remember in those hours have not been unknown to us or even unfamiliar to us aforetime. Notice the kind of fame which Herod

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THE PLACE OF MIRACLES.

heard of Jesus. Was it the fame of his eloquence or the fame of his spirituality? Was the governor struck by the breadth and grandeur of the spiritual conceptions of the new teacher? Probably not. What struck him most, and therein showed the vulgarity of his nature, was the miracles. Some men are more fascinated by lightning than by light. Herod heard of mighty works, grand wonders and astounding signs, but it is not said that he had heard of the beatitudes and revelled in sympathetic appreciation as he listened to the dripping music, the sweet pensive words which fell from the lips of the Teacher on the mountain.

It is even so to-day: we do not see men in their grandest point; it is some little incidental and transient thing that attracts our vulgar attention, some trick of manner, or tone of voice, or method of assault but what of the intellectual purview, the spiritual unction, the groping after the infinite, the passion of love, the redeeming care, the eternal patience? No reference is made to the higher qualities of men until long after their ascension. At first we talk about their miracles, their prodigies, signs and tokens, and not a word do we say about the subtle process that has in it ten thousand miracles of insight and sympathy and eloquence of the heart.

Mark the wisdom of Jesus Christ in this matter, he knew how the world must be approached, he understood the value of collateral helps such as miracles; Jesus Christ never intended the miracles to be continuous in the Church, because he knew they would soon drop into commonplace. Man has a wonderful capacity for absorbing miracles, of forgetting the last wonder, and of asking for another. Yet miracles have their place; they are great trumpets that call attention, flashing, dazzling signs that awaken men and make them look, and whilst they are looking, the great Teacher seizes his opportunity to touch and bless the inner nature.

What have we been in these matters ? Mere starers, wrought upon by fancy, the victims of our own wonder? Why, what is this but worshipping idols of our own making, bowing down before mean things of our own fashioning? The call to us is to the inner sanctuary, the upper chamber, the place where the Shekinah shines. We are stunned by miracles; we are saved by truth.