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DRAGGING THINGS DOWN.

class and for that class, give us better drainage and larger gardens and better ventilation, and we shall cobble the world up to stand on its rickety legs ten years longer. All these things are in themselves right enough: no sane man has one word to speak against them. If they be brought in, however, as causative, they must be rejected, they are collateral, they are co-operative, they are helpful, and in that sense they are necessary, but the world's stream will never be pure till the world's fountain has been cleansed. We think we can cure the world by officialism and by small sanitary pedantries, by congresses and conferences-all these things have their place and their use, but until we get at the root, and core, and centre, and heart, we are as men who are throwing buckets into empty wells and drawing them up again. The world will not believe this, so the world has not yet risen and taken up its bed and walked.

"And, behold, certain of the Scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth." There again is the belittling which man does in all his interpretations. O, if the sermon could be equal to the text in all cases, what preaching we should have and what hearing! Christ said, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." The Scribes said, "This man blasphemeth." We always drag down what we touch the day of rapture is gone, the sacred hour of enthusiasm has withdrawn itself, because we have besought it to depart. Men never speak in fire now we have fallen upon an age of prudence, and word measurement, and we are tricksters in the uses of syllables and in the adaptations of phrases, and never get beyond the poor range of little speech, or utter as with the heart those sentences which are revelations. We like to hear the little mincing voice that dare not utter one word louder than another; we like to hear the multiplication table repeated every Sunday from the first line to the last; we like to keep within statistical proofs and references that have been scheduled and that can be verified. The great prophet of fire, Elijah, is gone-were he to come again we would take him by the throat and thrust him into the dungeon.

The Scribes were right from their own point of view. It would have been blasphemy in any one of them to have spoken a noble word about anybody. There are some throats that were never made to emit one noble sound. There are men to whom prayers

are lies, and revelations are delusions, and prophecies are but the witnesses of the weakness of their speakers. A man cannot hear above his own level. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." Every dog has ears—yes, but not to hear. Men carry the standard of judgment within them; from the little man the little judgment, from the great man the noble criticism, from the divinest, the divinest love. It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men.

See how he never

"And Jesus, knowing their thoughts" relinquishes the spiritual line in all this incident. Jesus seeing their faith-that was a spiritual perception: Jesus seeing their thoughts-there is the same power of working mental miracles. He reads our minds; there is no curtain made yet by human hands, how cunning soever, that can shut out those eyes. He understands every pulsation of the heart, he reads every motion of the will, all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth-sometimes the universe seems to me to be all eyes; I am surrounded by eyes of fire. All speech seems to sum itself into one pregnant sentence-“ Thou God seest me."

Do not lightly pass over these words, for they open the great sphere of the mental miracles performed by Jesus Christ. We are accustomed to read about his physical miracles and to doubt them. Any Scribe can doubt. It is no great thing to doubt. The doubter never did anything for the world; the doubter never put one stone upon another. The world is indebted to its faith for its life and for its progress. Jesus not only cured the palsy, he read thoughts: already he begins to forecast the day when physical miracles shall depart, and the miracles that shall astound shall be heart-readings, and heart-companionships and spiritual revelations, and moral opportunities and destinies. We live in that dispensation now; miracles of an ordinary and outward kind have all gone, but the miracles of the Holy Ghost are being performed every day.

"For whether is easier

It would appear for I regard this statement as elliptical- that some thought had occurred to the mind of the Scribes that it was easy enough to say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," but the thing to do was to cure the man of the

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TRUE RELIGION IS MANLY.

palsy. It was easy to talk blasphemies, but what about performing the cure? There was a kind of self-gratulation as they suggested that Jesus Christ had taken the easy course of talking blasphemies and letting the substantial thing that was to be done alone, so he says, "Whether is easier to say, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' or to say 'Rise and walk'?'' The Scribes committed the mistake which the whole world has ever since been repeating. Where is there a man who does not think of every intellectual effort as quite easy? It is very difficult for a man to walk upon a tight rope across a river-that is something amazingworth a shilling to look at, but for any man to preach-why, of course that is easy enough any fool can do that everybody knows that anybody can preach a sermon ! To suggest a thought, to flash an idea upon the intellectual horizon-any man in a family who is good for nothing else can do that.

We always send the imbeciles into the Church. To go into the army requires a man, and to go into the navy requires a kind of man and a half, and to go into the law requires a good many men, but to go into the Church-why, the soft sap of a family will go into the Church. This is possible-possible in relation to all the communions into which the great Christian Church is broken up. There are no doubt soft men and imbecile men in every pulpit in Christendom-that is to say in every section of the Church in Christendom-but do not understand that the intellect

ual is always so easy. It is sometimes hard work, even to preach. There are those who think the spiritual worthless. It is easy to give advice nothing could be easier than to address oneself to spiritual necessities, and such service is worthless. Whoever thinks of paying a schoolmaster or a preacher ?

There are those who think of religion as merely sentimental, as having no practical value in it; yet there is not a man amongst us who does not owe his social status to religion. You would never have had the customers that flock around your counter but for religion you would never have got your debts collected but for religion; you would never have been saved from the gutter and the workhouse if an angel of religion had not come after you and brought you in. Religion is not a coloured cloud, an evaporating sentiment, it is a most practical factor in the creation and redemption and sanctification of human life.

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"And when the multitude saw it, they marvelled and glorified God." Trust to the great broad human instincts, and do not ask the Scribes what they think. Take your case to the Scribes and say, Gentlemen, what is your learned opinion about this man's cure?" and they, having rolled themselves round and round in the thickest bandages of the reddest tape, begin to consider. I have faith in broad human instincts: I will not altogether withdraw from our proverbial sayings-Vox populi vox Dei-I know the crowd has been wrong, I know the mob has been out of the way again and again (I am not speaking of mere crowds or mere mobs: I am speaking of the average human instinct all over our civilisation), yet it answers the true voice in the long run, it knows the right man, it knows the right cures, it knows the right books. That human instinct is the next best thing for our guidance to divine inspiration. Make friends of the people, and let little cliques and coteries rot in their own isolation.

Observe the course which Jesus Christ takes, "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sin. Arise, take up thy bed and go into thine own house." We must sometimes prove our religion by our philanthropy. Sometimes a man can understand a loaf when he cannot master an argument; sometimes a man can understand a kind action done to his physical necessities when he cannot comprehend or apply the utility of a spiritual suggestion; you do not relinquish the ground that the spiritual is higher than the material when you accommodate yourself to the man's weakness and say to him in effect, "You cannot understand this spiritual argument, therefore I will come down to your ground and do what you can understand." Thus the Church must often prove its religion by its philanthropy. The world cannot understand our creed, but the world can understand our collection. There are masses of men in London to-day who could really not understand what I am en. deavouring to expound it is beneath them, or above them, or beyond them, but they will be perfectly able to ascertain what we have done for cases of necessity that may now be appealing to our liberality.

This is God's method of proving his own kingdom and claim. "The goodness of God," the Apostle says, "should lead us to repentance." Every good gift given to the body and given to

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AN IRREFUTABLE ARGUMENT.

society is an angel that should lead us in a religious direction. God says to us every day, "That ye may know how to care for your souls, I will show you how to care for your bodies." Now what has he done for the body? Look at that lamp he has lighted, now shining as the southern zenith: look at the meadows he has spread and the gardens he has drawn around our habitations : look at the loving air, the hospitable summer, the abundant autumn, the restful sleep of the winter-and if he has done so much for the body, he says, "But that ye may know what I would do for your mind, for your soul, for your higher faculties, I give you these witnesses, that you can lay your hand upon and examine for yourselves."

It is an argument I cannot refute, it is an appeal I would gladly obey.