uncertainty of what is the ordinary witness of His influence and guidance. The works of the Spirit. are the witness of the Spirit. "The fruit of the Spirit" wrote that great Apostle, who was so impressed with the overwhelming importance and mightiness of the new work of the Spirit among men," the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Nothing can make up for the want of these as evidence of the presence of the Spirit; for it was to train the heart of man to these, to plant and nourish these virtues in his soul, to make these graces the strong and permanent elements of his character, that the gift of the Holy Spirit within him was vouchsafed, that this wonderful change was made possible in the powers and capacities of man's nature. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spírit will I put within you. I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them." Here was the purpose, the great moral purpose, of the promised gift. The great army of the Saints of Christ has shown how it has been fulfilled, in that variety of goodness and holiness which the world never saw before.

Let us then, not at Church only, amid the exultation and glories of praise and worship, but at home, amid our tasks and our duties, think seriously and worthily of our condition as men to whom a really new power, not of nature, not of our own creating,

has been given by the unutterable gift of God's Holy Spirit. We have sung the Veni Creator hymn in Church; let us repeat, in deepest earnest, its invitation and its prayer, in our secret chamber, in the thick of our work, amid temptation, amid trouble, amid rejoicing. He, whose presence was sealed to us in our Baptism, in our Confirmation, He who has come to us in many hours when we thought not of Him-the Inspirer of good thoughts, the Clearer up of doubts, the Strengthener of true and pure resolves-He is ever at hand to be appealed to, to give us light, to save us from the evil which hangs over us, to teach us what to pray for and how to pray, to infuse His own energy and purpose, and "fire of love" into our dreamy and wavering devotion. Waste not such blessings and such gifts by not believing them, by living as if they were not, by hollow praises, by unreal words. Ask Him humbly, ask Him unceasingly, to teach you to understand more and more the purpose of His coming; that He came, that He is with us, for the great work of renewing men to the image of God, “in righteousness and true holiness," that without Him "nothing is strong, nothing is holy." If you can only learn this lesson all His other blessings will follow. He will kindle our dark and dead knowledge into living meaning, He will accustom hearts and wills to recognise and welcome the will of God. He will shed abroad in our souls-how or whence we cannot tell the growing and deepening love of Christ.

With

He will make trouble endurable by His comfort, and temptation even a blessing by His support. Toil, with Him to uphold us, will be light, and sacrifices easy; with the heat and burden of the day, He will bring refreshment and rest; disappointment will have its recompense, and tears their solace. Him as our guest, and loyal to Him as our guide and light, we shall go on from strength to strength, till He brings us safely, in peace, in hope, in due preparation, to that brink and great dividing line, when all behind us shall be closed, when this world. shall be over, and we have nothing but the next before us.

So may He guide, and bless, and have mercy upon us. May He have mercy upon us in our course and trial, one by one. May He have mercy in time of perplexity and trouble on that Church of ours which He has so wonderfully quickened to a sense of its calling and its responsibilities. May He, the Spirit of light, of truth, of unity, dispel our ignorance and misunderstandings, raise our souls to the height of His teaching, draw estranged hearts one to another, teach us all to forbear and to be patient, to trust one another and to hope. May He who is also the Spirit of strength and fortitude, teach us to have courage, when necessary, to say the truth that is painful to say, to accept the duty which is hard, to bear the pain which it is right to bear. May He, the Spirit of love, of wisdom, of soberness, of concord, overrule all our mistakes and all our jars,

swallow up all our discords in His own Divine harmony, chasten our presumption, tame our pride; till at last, not by what we do, but by His Supreme guidance, God's work is done on earth, His purpose, for our days, fulfilled, His Church fully animated. by that Divine Spirit which alone can make it one; and each one of its members, according to his place and measure, has found in it, under the same blessed Teacher and Comforter, first his true work, and then his rest.

XIV

THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

"And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."—ST. JOHN xiv. 16, 17.

THE world we live in,-in which we are appointed to pass our present probation,-is so very different from the world unseen, that world which must be about us on all sides, encompassing the earth on which we dwell, that all that comes to us from it can be but dimly and partially understood. How could any one, who puts the two things side by side, the world of our experience, and the world of which we have no experience, possibly suppose that it could be otherwise? That world, which must exist, or else this one could not, that world beyond us of which the evidence is, up to a certain point, certain even to our senses, in sun, and sky, and starry universe, though that is but the smallest part of it,—we shall never know here, whatever else we may know. There it is, a certainty, yet impenetrable as death: and here is our world which we are familiar with all the days and all the nights of our passage through