leave undone, all our thoughts, affections, purposes, all our secret acts, all our hidden life, which is hid with Him in God: so do His true sheep know Him, His love, care, tenderness, mercy, meekness, compassion, patience, gentleness, all His forecasting and prudent watchfulness, His indulgent and pitiful condescension. They have learned it by the grace of regeneration, by the illumination of their spiritual birth, by the light of His holy Gospels, by acts of contemplation, by direct approach to Him in prayer, by ineffable communion in the holy Eucharist, by His particular and detailed guidance, by His providential discipline from childhood all along the path of life. It is the knowledge of heart with heart, soul with soul, spirit with spirit; a sense of presence and companionship : so that when most alone, we are perceptibly least alone; when most solitary, we are least forsaken. It is a consciousness of guidance, help, and protection; so that all we do or say, and all that befals us, is shared with Him. It fills us with a certainty that in every part of our lot, in all its details, there is some purpose, some indication of His design and will, some discipline or medicine for us; some hid treasure, if we will purchase it; some secret of peace, if we will only make it our own. Now if this be the knowledge which His sheep have of Him, it is plain that a great part of bap

tized men do not so know Christ. The multitude of the visible Church live in the world forgetful both of Fold and Shepherd: remembering them only in direct acts of religion, which are short and few, in the midst of a busy earthly life of buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, trading and toiling late and early. With the very best among us, how sadly true is this. Who is not backward in this one science which only it is needful for us to know? It is much to be feared that some persons, of seeming devotion, live on very strange to Him, and far off, knowing Him rather in the understanding and imagination, rather picturing Him upon their fancy in the garb and parable of the Good Shepherd, than realising with any true and vivid spiritual consciousness the truth and blessedness of His pastoral love and care.

Let us, then, consider in what way we may attain this knowledge, which is not of the understanding, but of the heart; not of the mere intellect, but in the consciousness of the soul.

Likeness to Him

1. First, it must be by following Him. "My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me." By living such a life as He lived. is the power of knowing Him. knowledge itself: there is no

Nay, rather it is

other. It cannot

be by the knowledge of eye, or ear, nor by the knowledge of imagination or thoughts, but by the

knowledge of the will, and of the spiritual reason instructed by the experience of faith. It is by likeness that we know, and by sympathy that we learn. "Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word, in Him verily is the love of God perfected hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." What fellowship can an impure soul have with One Who knew no sin or the self-indulgent with the Crucified : or the vain with Him that "made Himself of no reputation:" or a mind that is bounded about by this world, and content to move within its narrow sphere, in an aimless life of levities and follies, with Him who came into this world for one end alone, "that He might bring us unto God?" Such as these can have no fellowship with Christ; and if no fellowship, then no knowledge, which comes by sympathy, by partaking of His Spirit and of His life. We may read, study, toil, write, talk, preach, and make discourses which will illuminate, and move others to tears, while we ourselves are cold

1 St. John ii. 3-6; i. 6

and dark. So too, we may profess and pray, with our lips; be strict and regular in the ordinary works and offices of religion and all in vain, so long as our hearts and spiritual life are out of sympathy with His. How strange and perverse we are. That which is plainest to learn, we put off to the last; that which needs most grace to know, we take for our alphabet. How long shall we go on professing to judge of His doctrine, before we have begun to learn the imitation of His life? Surely the plainest and first lesson is, to follow His steps. This is the first work of our probation, the first condition of His guidance. If we would only take the Sermon on the Mount, and read it, not as the world has paraphrased it, but as He spoke it; if we would only fulfil it, not as men dispense with it, but as He lived it upon earth; we should begin to know somewhat of those deeper perceptions of His love, tenderness, and compassion, which are the peace of His elect. Such obedience has a searching and powerful virtue to quicken and make keen the faculties of our conscience. And it would change our whole view of the Christian life, from a solitary observance of an abstract rule of duty, into an abiding relation towards a personal and living Master. It would make men to feel that not only the general and confused sum of life shall, in the end of time, be brought into judgment, but that every deed and

thought, every motive of the heart and inclination of the will, are full of pregnant meaning; of obedience or of disobedience, of loyalty or betrayal, to the person of our Lord: that our every-day life is either in the track of His footsteps, or gone astray from the one only path that leadeth unto life. This is the first step to a true knowledge of Christ.

2. And, further than this: there are peculiar faculties of the heart which must be awakened, if we would know Him as He knows us. There can be no true obedience without the discipline of habitual devotion. By this is signified something far deeper than the habits of prayer which we commonly maintain. As obedience to Christ impresses us with a sense of His personality, so devotion awakens a perception of His presence. And how easy it is to pray for years with little or no sense of His nearness-with a dim, cold syllogism of the necessary presence of One that must be here, because He is God, for God is everywhere we all unhappily know. Half our difficulties in prayer, half the irksomeness of the act, the wearisomeness of the posture, the wandering of our hearts, the distraction of our thoughts, may be traced to this one great lack,the lack of a deep consciousness of His personal presence. And therefore it is our prayers gain for us so little light, so faint an insight into His mind