ers, tells of an interesting fact in his researches. For a certain purpose he determined to find out how far insects could be attracted by the reflection of flowers in a mirror. A mirror being placed behind the plant in flower so as to give a good reflection, the visitants were watched. It was all in vain; the insects went straight to the real flowers, and occupied themselves on them without paying any attention to the reflection. Whilst duly appreciative of all aids to biblical interpretation, let them not divert you from the living flowers wet with dew, rich with honey, and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

3. Take care that the study of the literary aspects of revelation does not obscure for you its spiritual signification. We may concentrate our attention on the history, philology, poetry, and philosophy of revelation until its spiritual intent and redeeming message are wellnigh forgotten. When Sir Humphry Davy returned from Paris, he was asked what he thought of the picture galleries. He replied, "The finest collection of frames that I ever saw." Delighted with the gilded margin, he missed the masterpiece. It is possible to become so absorbed with the literary setting of revelation that we virtually forget the redeeming God and His great salvation. Andrew Bonar writes in his diary: "I fear that my delight in the Scriptures is very much because of the joy of the understanding." A very subtle snare, yet we will venture to think a real one. We may lawfully linger over its beauty, but its

main merit is that it gives life to the heart in which it is hid. It is held by some botanists that the wheatplant is by descent a lily; if the pedigree of the golden grain is carefully traced, it will be seen that it is identical with the brilliantly coloured lilies of the field. This, no doubt, is an interesting speculation; it is pleasing to find loveliness and utility so blended: yet, after all, the main question to mankind is the bread by which it lives. So, whilst we are glad to know the literary excellence of the sacred Word, to find its art and eloquence unsurpassed in any other direction, we rejoice with exceeding great joy to taste in it the immortal bread. The loveliness of the letter is forgotten in the preciousness of the spirit. The end of the Scriptures is not the joy of the intellect, but that we may be made wise unto salvation.

4. As teachers and preachers, let us keep in close daily touch with Christ and His Word. It is reported that when Alma-Tadema was painting his "Heliogabalus," a picture in which roses are a prominent feature, the artist was in the habit of receiving fresh boxes of roses twice a week from the Riviera, so that he literally and actually had a new model for every individual blossom. So closely and delicately must the painter live in touch with nature; he must keep on dipping his brush afresh in her very colours if he is to represent her with truth and distinction. Great lesson here for every messenger of Christ. In every sermon, exhortation, lesson, and prayer,

we must go back to revelation for the colour, aroma, and virtue of heaven. If our words are to be real, winged, loving, spirit and life, the contact with the divine oracle must not be interrupted.

XII

THE SEAT OF AUTHORITY

The kingdom of God is within you-LUKE xvii. 21.

T

HERE never was a time when men were more severely tempted than they are now to believe in the overmastering power of the

external. Our growing knowledge of the ocean of forces in which we live makes us almost despair of anything like personal independence and mastery. We come we scarcely know how-to regard ourselves as parts of the vast machine of nature, and it seems absurd to suppose that we can withstand or divert the action of cosmic law. Awed by the mighty outside world, we are in danger of forgetting that eternity has been set in our heart, and that we can call upon "all that is within us" to redress the balance of the exterior and mechanical. But we must beware how we yield to this insidious fatalism. History, indeed, from beginning to end, is the drama of liberty, the protest of the human race against the world which enchains it, the triumph of the infinite over the finite, the freedom of the spirit, the reign of the soul. Impelled by an invisible hand, humanity "breaks its bonds and ad

vances into new ways.' ""* The sense of liberty, the acute consciousness of responsibility, are essential to the individual and the race; without the conviction of personal sufficiency as against circumstance our whole nature is impaired. Let us, then, remind ourselves of this spiritual sovereignty, so that we may claim and exercise it to our great advantage. We address ourselves

I. To those whose chief fight in life is with their INHERITED NATURE,

Our essential self sympathizes with the right and pure, but our inherited nature is infected and treacherous. With the dawning of consciousness we discover in ourselves the impulses of evils derived from our ancestry. We are vain and ambitious, the victims of ungovernable temper: we are selfish and self-willed, tormented by fleshly appetites and passions. The physical and mental bias to lawlessness painfully asserts itself. The entail of evil is often simply awful, and in all of us it is deeply disquieting and humiliating. What view ought we, then, to take of these constitutional defects? Ought we tamely to permit our abnormal weaknesses and predispositions to rule and destroy us?

First, let us realize distinctly and vividly what our true nature is. Everything depends upon our ancestry. How often do we smile in reading biography! The biographer spends a chapter in proving-or in attempting to prove-that his hero sprang from dis*Quinet.