better becomes best. It is true that we live in deeds, not years. It is by descending into the valley of the work-a-day that we scale the radiant mountains of the ideal, just as the massive oak that thrusts its top against the sky steadily drives its roots deeper and deeper into the nourishing earth. It is by doing the will of God that we come to know the Person behind that will. We are told to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. It is a great, strong truth, invigorating to the utmost. Adorn the doctrine of God-how? Well, a musician adorns the doctrine of music, not by looking at the sheet alone, but by building the written notes into rhythmic palaces of sound. An artist adorns the doctrine of colour by painting his vision upon the canvas. A philosopher adorns the doctrine of philosophy by wisely interpreting it to his students. Just so you adorn the doctrine of God when it flashes in your eyes, transfigures your face, inspires your speech, quickens your steps upon errands of mercy, rejoices your heart in the doing of fine and lovely deeds. No matter how humble, they cannot be lost. Unknown and unsung here, they shall bẹ well-known and sung by angels there. "For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light."

IV

Thought, word, and deed culminate in the candour of character. What we are is simply the harvest of our thinking, speaking, and doing. Therefore, each of us should solemnly avow: "As I am compelled to live on intimate terms with myself for time and eternity, it behooves me to make the best possible self." To do this is the purpose of the Christ. The Christian lives the grandly co-operative life. God helps him, and he helps God. Thus are we saved from a false, artificial, untrue self to a genuine, harmonious, finely articulated personality. "Nature," wrote the late Stopford Brooke, "is humanized, spiritualized by us. We have imprinted ourselves on all things; and this as we realize it, as we give thought and passion to lifeless Nature, makes us understand how great we are, and how much greater we are bound to be. We are the end of Nature but not the end of ourselves. We learn the same truth when among us the few men of genius appear; stars in the darkness. We do not say: 'These stand alone; we never can become as they.' On the contrary, we cry: All are to be what they are, and more. They longed for more, and they and we shall have it. All shall be perfected; and then, and not till then, begins the new age and the new life, new progress and new joy.'" Judas went to his own place because he would not have the place Love prepared for him. The terror

of sin is that it gets the upper hand of the soul that deliberately says: "Evil, be thou my good." But evil can never be good—anywhere, anyhow, anywhen-because evil is essentially bad, and its victim cries out at last with Browning's character: “Why have I girt myself with this hell-dress?"

But it is our high task to weave a different suit of soul-clothing. We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, making no provision for the things of the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. We are to dress our inner selves in whatsoever things are true and lovely and of good report. Looking out the other morning, I saw wondrous things afoot in the gorgeous east. There was a kind of moving picture show exhibiting in the sky. First great films of saffron came out on the hills of dawn and said: “How do you like my colours, Mr. Sleepy Eyes? Are they not fresh enough and glorious, too?” Soon I was standing at the window. Then the saffron slides were quickly shuffled away by unseen hands and great swaths of sapphire came and said: "I'm a magnificent thief; I have stolen the blue of the sea and lifted it up here on the heights of the young morning." Last of all, an immeasurable screen of vermilion drifted across the face of the clouds and said: "Saffron may be golden, sapphire may be ocean-kissed, but vermilion, if you please, is the very latest and in the extreme of fashion." And just then a memorable sight occurred. The great sun himself cleared the horizon and said:

"O man, be not deceived by saffron and sapphire and vermilion. They are just my splendour-tinted children. They are, because I am; I have sent them; it is I myself who give them being." And so a man's thoughts, words, and actions are the children of his own creation. He may stand below the horizon now while his spiritual progeny but half reveal and half conceal his true self. But he is rising with all the force of gravity to the inevitable hour of self-publication. God will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of all hearts; and then shall each man have his praise from God. For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light. Wherefore, let us be sons of the morning, walking in the light as He is in the light, and when the shadows are fled and the night is gone, we shall see face to face, know as we are known, and all the hushed voices of the heart will break into full-throated song.

B

XI

THE SHEPHERD GOD

Psalm xxiii.

LESSED is the man who writes a worthy

national song! The hearts of all true patriots are grateful to him who expresses their love for their native land. But what shall we say of a poet who writes a song uttering the deepest sentiment of all nations? And yet, by universal consent, David accomplished this high service in the Twenty-third Psalm. Variously have men attempted to voice their appreciation of this masterpiece of the soul. But there is in it a quality which subtly eludes the descriptive power of all high and noble words. One has likened it unto a nightingale, because it sings so sweetly in the valley of shadows; another has compared it unto a lark, because it soars so high into the skies of divine love. My own comparison, I think, should be that of a winged minstrel, soaring over all seas, flying through all lands, entering all palaces, all hovels, all dungeons; standing beside all graves, all sick bodies, all wounded hearts, all little children, all men and all women of high and low degree-singing-singing to all the happy and sad folk in the