thinketh in his heart so is he. Not to say "No" here is to say Yes" to impurity and ruin.

Also, we must say this "No" in the realm of the appetites. How often does this argumentation go on within a man : Here I am; I did not make myself; God made me; I am craving with certain appetites; I did not put them within me-God did; there are certain objects which will feed and fill these appetites; because the objects fit desire, why not let desire fly to object, and charge the blame, if blame there be, on God?

And such argumentation would be true and right, and could not be overthrown were it not that when men think thus with themselves they leave out a most essential fact-viz., that God has put desire within and object without to meet each other under the control of moral will and moral responsibility. And that it is the business of this moral will to see to it that appetite is kept in slavery to its high behests.

Also we must say this "No" in the realm of circumstances. We must not allow circumstances to master us for evil; we must compel circumstances to be our ministers for righteousness, for tough endurance, for the upbuilding of noble character.

And the power for this "No"; the veto-power for the new year? It is for us where it was long ago for Nehemiah -in the fear of God.

JAN. 10-16.-THE STORY OF A BAD STOPPING.*-2 Kings, xiii. 18.

In those old times hostilities were often proclaimed by a king or general publicly and with due ceremony shooting an arrow into an enemy's country.

For sixty years the prophet Elisha has been witnessing for God in Israel.

But as every man at last must be, he is smitten with his mortal sickness,

I have used here somewhat a chapter in a lit

and the rumor runs that the venerable and honored prophet is about to die.

Joash is the King of Israel. Even the king must pay respect to noble character. In the long run it is always character which grasps the real sceptre. So the king comes to make respectful visitation at the dying prophet's bedside.

After all, the true defence of nations is the strong character of its people. This the king feels in fresh fashion as he stands there beside the dying prophet's bed. To lose Elisha is to miss a bulwark of his kingdom. Sobbingly the king confesses it (2 Kings xiii. 14). That is to say, for real defence better than marshalled hosts art thou and thy service among the people, O dying prophet!

Syria was the constant and encroaching enemy of Israel. Lately Syria had been sorely pressing Israel.

Answered the dying prophet to the king: "Take bow and arrows." And the king took unto him bow and arrows. "Make thine hand to ride upon the bow," commands the prophet.

And the king obediently laid arrow on the bow, and set its notch upon the string, as though he were about to shoot.

And Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands. Thus would Elisha, as the Lord's prophet, show that what was being done was doing by the Lord's direction.

through the open lattice, shoot arrow after arrow, till all are gone, and they remain there smiting into and sticking in the ground as symbols of a dauntless purpose.

And the king shot one arrow, and it smote the ground.

And the king shot the second arrow, and it smote the ground.

And the king shot the third arrow, and it smote the ground.

And then, listlessly, or unzealously, or faithlessly, the king stopped.

"Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn and shine with increasing clearness upon your path."

Arago went on and became the first astronomical mathematician of his time. "But I am too old," men say. But use is the law of growth. And the quickest way to bring upon one's self the worst sort of senility is to withdraw from life and the interests and duties of it. I have known many a rich man

And so it was that King Joash gained but partial victory over the Syrians.

Is not the lesson evident? Smiting but thrice and staying-only half-doing, not pushing to the finishing in grand faith and unrelaxing purpose-is not that the trouble with multitudes of men? Here, then, is our story of a Bad Stopping.

(a) In the direction of success in the daily life men often make a bad stopping. They smite but thrice and stay.

Success is duty. The difference between men as to making the most of themselves is due, oftener than we are apt to think, to this simply, whether they smite but thrice and stay, or whether they not only smite thrice but -go on smiting.

'But it is hard," men say. Yes; but everything that gets up in this world must struggle up. One relates how Arago, the French astronomer, tells, in his autobiography, that in his youth he one day became puzzled and discouraged over his mathematics, and almost resolved to give up the study. He held his paper-bound text-book in his hand. Impelled by an indefinable curiosity, he damped the cover of the book, and carefully unrolled the leaf to see what was on the other side. It turned out to be a brief letter from D'Alembert to a young man like himself, disheartened by the difficulties of mathematical study, who had written to him for counsel This was the letter:

uselessness, a quick coming and barren old age, a speedier death than would have come had the powers been kept in play.

"But I would be humble," men say. Yes; but if you do not amount to much, there is all the more reason you should make the most of yourself. And a true humility is never a withdrawing from service, but is always a readiness to set one's self to even the lowliest service for the love of God and fellow-men.

(b) In the direction of overcoming evil habits men often make a bad stopping. They smite but thrice and stay. As some one says, such men are like a man who, attempting to jump a ditch, will never really jump, but will forever stop and return for a fresh run.

(c) In the direction of resisting temptation men often make this bad stopping. They resist thrice, but at the fourth assault they yield.

(d) In the direction of advance in the Christian life men often make this bad stopping. Plenty of Christians through a long life do not get much beyond the initial stage of justification.

(e) In the direction of becoming Christian, men often make this bad stopping. They smite in the way of at least a partial and outward change of life, etc., but when it comes to a total and irreversible surrender of the self to the Lord Jesus, they stay.

Oh, let this new year be to all of us not a year of bad stopping, but of splendid advancing in all things pure, and true, and right!

JAN. 17-23. -THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT.-2 Cor. ix. 15.

The Apostle Paul was not a Christian who believed that money and its management lay outside the circle of Christianity. He believed that money and its management lay very centrally within that circle. You shall find the epistles of the great apostle large in speech about the matter. To talk of money gathered, spent, given for the sake of Jesus and in the spirit of Jesus, was not break and intrusion-something apart from Christian feeling and thinking. The offering, in the apostle's thought, was never an element foreign to wor ship, but was an integral part of worship.

The apostle is writing just now about the offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem he has in charge. Then, as always with the apostle, what he is at present thinking of makes him think of the Lord Jesus. There is nothing, according to the apostle's way of thinking, that does not hold real relation with Jesus Christ. And, as the apostle thinks of Him, his heart takes fire, and he bursts out in our Scripture: "Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!"

This word "unspeakable" is a peculiar one. It is used only here in the New Testament, It means, literally, gift, not to be told throughout. It is as if he had said, "You can tell about this gift of yours of money, O Corinthians, what it can do; how it will bind into better brotherhood; how it will lift burdens from the poor saints there in Jerusalem; but when you come to God's gift of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-its vastness, its preciousness why, that gift is untellable, it transcends speech, it cannot be told throughout, it is unspeakable.

First. In its total meaning God's gift of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is unspeakable. How can you put its whole significance into words? You must strain and struggle to even hint its meaning; and then the great unsaid part of it sweeps away as the ocean does

from the horizon you can see as you stand upon the shore. There is always a great Divine mystery brooding in this gift of God. Christ, the Divine Human, the marriage-point of the human and the Divine, possessing in His undivided yet complex person the nature of God and the nature of man; and all the infinite reaches of the atonement He wrought out manward, Godwardhow can you tell such things as these? Your widest, deepest, precisest words are too narrow, and too shallow, and too misty for such transcendently august conceptions.

Second. This gift of God is unspeakable in its sacrifice. God is not impassible in the sense of not feeling, but only in the sense that He is over and beyond this external universe; that therefore He is not moved by external influences to need and other emotions; that His infinite nature is sufficient for itself. God's impassibility does not mean that He does not have emotions. He has. He is full of them. Only for their movement He is not dependent upon the external universe. They well up in Him. And when God gave out of Himself His only begotten Son, there was infinite consciousness and emotion of sacrifice in Him. God's gift was His utmost gift. Even infinity could not give more. But how can you adequate. ly tell these things? You cannot. They are beyond telling. They cannot be uttered through. They are unspeakable.

Third. This gift of God is unspeakable in its latent possibilities. What cannot God intend for you when He gave His Son for you! Streets of gold, gates of pearl-they are the merest dross and fringe of poorest comparison. What God means for the lowliest believer in the gift of His Son for him is -beyond the telling.

But even the smallest vision of this unspeakable gift of God ought to do and will do much for us.

(a) It ought to rid us of a very common but untrue and unworthy conception of God-viz., that the atonement and all the immeasurable blessings in