glory and blessing attendant on the reign of Christ. The "angel," for the most part, is symbolic of some Divine presence that pervades the church, or the Kingdom, or the world, or human life. It is a very significant thing that close to my text, and in the very next breath, and indeed throughout the chapter, that Divine presence is identified with the radiant Son of God. And so when John says that he "saw an angel standing in the sun," he means that in the world there is a Divine presence out of which all its glory springs; that there is something behind the world of matter that we cannot see and cannot account for; that beneath all the network of law there seems to stand in the dignity of omnipotence a something that is higher than law; that there is a guiding mind in all our history; that there is a commanding will in human events; that there is a purpose under which life will yield its meaning; that in the motion of a butterfly's wings and in the mighty cataclysms of the race there is a reason so pure and great that every event is justifiable; that history is so religious that it is divine. In a word, he means that God stands at the centre of the universe. It is He who

has taken the "place in the sun." His is the hidden energy; His is the motive power; He is the controlling and guiding mind; He is the distant goal to which all things move and in whom all things consist; He is the

"One God, one law, one element,

And one far off Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."

GOD IN NATURE

When we begin to examine this truth, we see at once how clear is its proof in the realm of nature. We have all been aware, at least at times, that there is something behind the beauty and ruggedness, the moods and tempers of nature that we cannot see, an invisible presence that breathes through and breaks out from it to impress itself upon our minds. All the poets have been conscious of their inability to quite define or describe the mystic spirit that is there. Their songs have not been strong enough or deep enough or subtle enough in feeling to catch the liquid melody of a running brook. They have never been able to write verses that could match "the rhythm of the fall

ing rain." They are helpless to fashion music that can approach the majesty of the deeptoned thunder. The silences that men create can never out-silence in stillness "the pathway of the snow." Against the background of light there emerges a something ineffably more glorious. Within and behind and speaking through nature is nature's great infinity, which is God. And that is what men like Tennyson hint at when in the beauty of a modest flower they find themselves confronted by the unexplored depths of a nameless presence. It is "the angel in the sun."

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

GOD IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Carry this text into the realm of human experience and let His saints bear witness how in their joys and sorrows, their prosperities and adversities, they have been able to trace the footsteps of a Presence that ruled and

overruled, that guided and controlled, and even unveiled His face through the mantle of the darkest cloud. Hear the Psalmist say: "It is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn thy statutes. Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept thy word." What does this mean if not that this man found God in all his life, transmuting even the darkest sorrow into the Divinest blessing. Hear Paul, beaten, stoned, imprisoned, shipwrecked, robbed of friends, home, comforts-hear Paul say: "But I would have you understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places." To Paul there was a Divine purpose even in his chains. Or hear Frances Ridley Havergal, from a bed of sickness, with not a moment's surcease of pain, say:

I take this pain, Lord Jesus, from Thine own hand, The strength to bear it bravely Thou wilt command.

'Tis Thy dear hand, O Saviour, that presseth sore,
The hand that bears the nail-prints for evermore.

And now beneath its shadow, hidden by Thee,
The pressure only tells me Thou lovest me!

These are the glimpses of those who have read the secret meaning of human life, who have learned to know that "all things work together for good to those who love the Lord," who with eyes that were cleansed of the dust of earth and deepened in spiritual penetration have seen the vision of an "angel standing in the sun."

GOD IN HISTORY

Take with you this truth out into the wider tracts of the history of the race, and its lines are writ so large that "he who runs may read." I do not deny that many a man at many a time has found it hard to trace the footsteps of God in the ebbing and flowing of the human progress. So dark, so forbidding, so puzzling have been the prospect and the retrospect alike that men have been led to ask, "Is there any God at all? Is there any guiding mind? Is there any dominating will? Is there any loving heart? Is there any holy end? Is there any angel in the sun?" To all these fear-born questions the long verdict of history gives only one reply there is! Even a passing glance at a few