spiritually lean because they have never reached the other and living side of the venerable and noble Christian symbols. The means of grace are very, very good, and most essential, but grace is infinitely better than its means. Men are not likely to reach the grace without the divinely ordained means; but men should not swallow the means and nibble at the grace. To stop the millionth part of a spiritual inch this side of Christ is to cheat our souls of what is due them. Returning to your home from church this morning, you will not sit down very long in your parlour, will you? By common consent, you are all dining-room pilgrims. You will neither tarry nor rest until you reach that promised land of the inner man. But suppose there is one who enters his dining-room, beholds the table groaning with delicious food, sits down and asks a blessing, and then-mirabile dictu!-does not eat a single bite! What's the dining-room for? For food. What's the table for? For food. What's the food for? To be eaten, of course. "O foolish man," you say, "to have everything good to eat, and yet to remain hungry." But, after all, is he one whit more foolish than those who have the Scriptures, the Church, the Ministry, this glorydrenched world in which no two snowflakes are alike and in which every soul is different from every other soul, and yet falls short of the living Christ? Men who mope about looking for a dead Christ will go moping all their days. There is not room

in time and space for a dead Christ, and yet the universe itself is not spacious enough to hold the living Christ. Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, He runs from sky to sky, eternity is the breath of His nostrils, the sundown heavens catch fire from the brightness of His face and burn to molten ruins through all the wide-winged west, and soon the April world, with its young grasses and opening buds and bursting throats, will turn our planet into a pulpit, saying: "He hath plucked the sting from death; He hath chained the grave to His chariot wheels; He hath gone up on high, and all the gates of glory opened at His coming; He who hath made all things beautiful hath coined Himself into beauty for the world; He hath led captivity captive and given gifts to men."

Religion as life includes a willing will and the living Christ. There is a final step-the result of it all-and that is deathless life. "Ye will come to me"--what for?" that ye may have life." Now, mere existence may be written in a wounded past tense and a limping present; but life-rich, unfailing, ever-deepening life—is an eternal now. "This is life eternal"-on either side the grave, in the body or out of the body, fenced in by matter or lifted beyond the choking clutch of matter, anywhere, in any world, for ever and ever-"this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Here it is, my friend, the biggest, sweetest, gladdest

secret at the centre of the worlds. Christ hath plucked out the heart of the great mystery. He fulfils the world-old dreams, hopes, aspirations; they all come winging forth to sun themselves in the light of His glory. Is it not life for which we pant? Here it is-wonderful, glorious, unutterable! Why, you may have words as lustrous as the shining colours in imagination's loom, and your words are too weak to express the smallest part of the soul's higher enchantments. Interfused with the divine reality, his spirit pulsing with eternal life, a man may lean over the edge of space and learn no new wonder. For the inner facts of the ultimate have beckoned to him. To miss them is to toss stars away and toy with gewgaws. Loving what God loves, he hates what God hates. For no man can have a supernal love for the supreme and not have a terrible scorn for the superficial. To have this love of love and hate of hate is to be alive; to have it not is to be dead. But because you may be spiritually dead, do not slander the universe by calling it a graveyard. O, plunge into the thrilling tides of being! Come where Heaven's refreshing billows are, where woven calms smite the harp-strings of the soul as softly as tinkling bells twirling lyric tunes out of the unspoken silences. Wake up! Be made alive! Love, laugh, weep, work, sigh-be anything, but don't be dead! Just to be alive, and hug a living world, throwing your grateful arms about its

soft-green neck; just to be alive, and walk the kindly, brothering ways; just to be alive, and know that the world is one vast red Calvary which Joseph's garden touches to immortal bloom; just to be alive, and to feel that you are going to be more and more alive forever-is it not enough to make you aware of the music behind "the creaking of the tented sky, the ticking of Eternity"?

VIII

GOD'S USE OF AFFLICTION

"And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."ST. JOHN IX: 1, 2, 3.

"W

HO sinned?" It is one of the old, old questions of man. Sin is such a gruesome factor in our race, ranging so wide, cutting so deep, hurting so many, that the Jew beheld this dark assassin hiding in the background of every calamity, of every sorrow, of every sickness. And there is so much authority in human experience for the ancient Jew's viewpoint, that men do well to pause before filing a single bill of exceptions. But that bill has been filed, and by no mere man. It was the Christ who breaks the power of sin, who cleanses from the guilt of sin, who saves from sin-it was this Christ who said that all of life's afflictions are not due to sin, that there are exceptions to this all but universal cause of human suffering. But the disciples thought there was no exception; and when they saw the man blind from his birth, they asked: Rabbi, who sinned,

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