with a forgotten sympathy each gazing eye and
graving on the hearts of all lessons of its own
unflecked purity. Write in golden letters over its
cradle or its grave the motto of apostles; breathe
with the morning and the evening kiss these words
of blessing-AS POOK YET MAKING MANY RICH.

Who again was poorer according to social standards
than the sightless unbefriended poet, earning by the
masterpiece of his genius barely so much as a com-
mercial nonentity of our day will gain and lose in an
idle morning? Yet who, after the sacred writers, has
added more to the regalia of our literature out of the
treasury of a stored and stately mind? So in higher
measure was it with the Companions of the Lord.
Poor in their peasant origin, poor in attendance on a
homeless Teacher, with neither silver nor gold at
command, accounted the offscouring of all things and
led out into the world's amphitheatre with the death-
chant on their lips; yet what men have unlocked
such realms of happiness to mankind, or followed so
closely the track of him who "though he was rich yet
for our sakes became poor, that we through his
poverty might be rich"? May it be hoped that,
even by the hasty survey made in these fugitive
chapters, they have enriched, our minds with some
new impressions and resolves?

But while it is fitter to end in admiring the virtues
of the majority of the disciples than mourning over
the great apostate, it behoves us especially to conside:
them in the relation they bore to that divine Source
whence their fertilizing streams were derived. "Be

ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ,” said
the latest, but not the least, of their order, in "words
which should ever rise to our mind when the life of an
apostle is brought before us. So said not the older
prophets they were signs, oracles, preachers, but not
of necessity examples. It was the characteristic privi-
lege of the apostles that their lives, like that of their
Divine Master, though in lower degree, cannot be
known and felt without being imitated. Prophets,
psalmists, evangelists, miracles, preachers, rulers, all
these may pass from the Christian Church, but apostles
never."
Their permanence as examples is measured
by the closeness with which they followed their Lord.
It may be worth while therefore to note the position
they occupied towards him. This position was not
fixed. There are two brief sayings of Jesus on
record—the one spoken on the eve of his passion,
the other on the morning of his rising, wherein a
triple relation is assigned to his followers-of ser-
vants, friends and brethren.

When it was said to the eleven, at the farewell
supper, "Henceforth I call you not servants, but
friends," the Lord implied that up to that hour they
had been regarded by him mainly as servants. This
was undoubtedly the original purpose of their voca-
tion, as it remained their acknowledged function
throughout; and though now a closer tie was recog-
nized, the earlier was not for that reason broken.
At that very board they were reminded: "Ye call me
Master and Lord and ye say well; for so I am ;" and
to the end of life they proudly wore the title of ser-
vants, setting it in the forefront of their epistles, and

delighting to receive the stigmata of Christ, to place his foot upon their prostrate necks and bind themselves with cords to the horns of his altar. Amid privilege they never lost sight of obligation; for them no jot or tittle of the moral law was thought to be repealed, but a rigorous chastity of life and motive demanded, under sanctions so strong that pride became impossible.

"Boast not thy service rendered to the King,

'Tis grace enough he lets thee service bring.”

In the earlier period of their intercourse with him, the Saviour could treat his apostles scarce otherwise than as servants; so slowly moved their minds and so clogged were the wheels of intellect by prejudice that it would have been premature to submit to them all his plans. But ere he left the world their training was sufficiently advanced for him to tell them whatsoever he had received of the Father. Entrusting to them these disclosures, he advanced them to the dignity of his friends; for then, and only then, does acquaintance ripen into friendship when confidences begin to be exchanged and hearts to be fused in glowing sympathy. We might indeed understand a very different sense in which Jesus could call his disciples "not servants," for so unsteady had been their obedience that rebuke seemed due rather than acknowledgment; but that he should call them his friends is a marvel of condescension. And yet not of condescension alone: loftiest wisdom found expression in that epithet of trust. To emancipate the body is to make vassal of the affections; to set

a servant free, to put him on his honour and treat him as a friend is the surest way of binding him to one's side by gratitude and personal interest; for "a bond is none the weaker for being loose; the rope that is drawn tight is strained and apt to break." The freedman too, besides acknowledging this moral obligation, will bring to his task self-respect and unmanacled powers whereby incomparably better work will be done than by the listless drudge. How amply the apostles vindicated the Lord's venture of confidence their later history has shewn; would that every Christian heart claimed the same permitted intimacy and walked as a friend with God. Irreverence and laxity may be the more patent sins of our age; yet it is sad to remark the many who toil on in irons within the cave of servile fear instead of working gladly in the sunny vineyard of liberty and love, who approach their Maker with the cringing obeisance of an Oriental court rather than enter boldly into the holiest by the new and living way.

One step higher. Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren and own us as of one parentage with himself. When words of bitter remonstrance might have been expected by the unfaithful apostles, a message was sent from the sepulchre which exalted them to a higher position than any they had before enjoyed: "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father." If aught were wanted to win their hearts to new hope and loyalty, what so effectual as that assurance of their Lord's remembrance, forgiveness and continued sympathy? It is easier to command obedience than to

engage the soul's fealty; for where the limbs may be coerced the love is found coy and hard to make captive; but one power can charm it forth, and that the spell of love. Even the publicans love those that love them, unable to resist the power of human love; much more then are we conquered by the divine love, whenever it is duly presented and apprehended, and constrained to love God because he first loved us.

"O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself,
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,

And thou must love me who have died for thee!"

A hungry creed is that which would resolve our heavenly Father into "an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," and bid us feed our love on the husks of an abstraction; we want a living person to love, even as the hop a strong support about which to clasp and twine. Be the doctrine of "a great Personal First Cause" an “extrabelief" or not, of this we are sure, that One who was infinitely wiser than our modern apostles of culture and sweet reasonableness both held it himself and taught it to men. The Lord Jesus spoke not of a Principle but a Father; he came amongst us as the revelation of that Father, presenting in himself the divine purity incarnate and in a lovable shape. And it is when we are linked with him in brotherly union that sin comes to be loathed as alien from our true nature, that in the pursuit of virtue the pulse of joy