sinning? That is not patience! and the result of it is that we take back the sin.

Bear it, on the contrary, in submission to that which we know to be just law; in acknowledgment of the justice of the punishment, and in the certainty that justice itself is producing the peaceable fruits of righteousness within us. Bear it in love to God in whom this justice and righteousness that afflict us abide; bear it in confession that punishment is love, since it is consuming our sins with fire; bear it in faith that, not by the punishment, but through it, we are being redeemed. Such is the patience of endurance.

Now both these kinds of patience have their reward—their natural spiritual fruit-strength of soul. This is Fortitude; that virtue which of all is greatest, next to Love; that virtue which filled the heart of St. Paul when close to death he said, "I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith:" the virtue which was highest of all in Christ, when, in the midst of his agony, he said, "Father, not my will, but thine be done."

These, then, to gather up what I have said in these two sermons-are the three thoughts with regard to this Christian race-the encouragement derived from the vision of the victorious dead who

are alive and watch us from their height; the two necessities for the running-Christian Renunciation and Christian Patience.

But the writer does not end here; if he did, we should not be satisfied. We need a complete ideal in our own humanity; we need one who fulfilled all that the martyred saints desired to be on earth. We need a king from among ourselves who is king because in him human love and faith and righteousness were supreme; whose race was unweighted with distractions and not overwhelmed with sin; whose patience was made perfect. We need to find one on whom all our thought of man may concentrate itself, one who will tell us that the perfection we desire is possible for Human Nature.

So the writer felt-and at the last he placed before his hearers Jesus, the Master of mankind. At the head of this mighty cloud of witnesses, one sits higher than the rest, the chief of those who have done and suffered, the leader and the perfecter of faith in his Father. It is to his confession that we look for encouragement the most; from him that we win a daily sympathy, a deeper communion than from any other of our fellow men; from him that we know what our race should be; in him that we find the highest human love and life, whensoever we despair of our humanity. There is the victorious

man: the vision of our humanity, the proof that we are capable of being sons of God. Beyond him is the Father, through whom he became what he was; through whom we shall become what he is. And as we look we cry out with St. Paul, "We are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

So is completed the picture of the text. It is a favourite subject of Christian art. In those old pictures painted when religious art strove to render on canvas or on wall the supernatural rather than the natural, divine expression rather than beautiful form, illimitable ideas imperfectly expressed rather than limitable ideas perfectly expressed, we see Christ seated in the centre under the raining light that falls from the eternal Father, and on either side in radiating lines, kings, and martyrs, and all the saintly dead of the historic years, prophets, priests, and virgins, bearing the instruments of their sufferings and the palms of victory; and above the evangelists, the crowd of angels and the heavenly host. As we look, it requires but little imagination to shape below a struggling band of runners upon carth, whom this great assembly are compassing about with faithful watching and with great hopes.

And we are of that number! Let us, therefore, run our race with patience, looking unto Jesus through youth, through manhood, and through old

age; so running that we may obtain. And when at last only one step is needed to bring us face to face with the brightness of the great Rewarder's presence, and the welcome of the redeemed who are with him in glory, we shall hear, as the sounds of earth die on our ears, the voice of Jesus say to us— "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

THE UNUSED TALENT

"Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

"And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine."-MATTHEW xxv. 24, 25.

"And that one talent which 'twas death to hide". so said Milton. What did he mean? He meant that if he did not use that which was committed to him, so as at least to double its power, he was a dead man. Nor was this only the fantastic phrase of a poet, but of one who, when he wrote it, was in the midst of a keen political and ecclesiastical struggle, to which -throwing by for a time his imaginative worldhe gave his whole intellect and life, making one of those great sacrifices of pleasure and peace for the sake of truth, which are as famous in history as they are of inspiring example to mankind. We listen then to him seriously when he speaks, and know that he believed his words to be true-I shall be a dead man if I hide my talent; I am alive if I use it.

In God's eyes, then, are we dead or alive? Some