which we live, the facts by which the world lives, like the heaven from which they come, overarch our farthest prospect and, as we advance, crown some remote region with a fulness of glory.

From century to century, terms, phrases, whole passages of the written Revelation gain in breadth of meaning as men grow in largeness of experience and in capacity of vision.

It is not that the sense of the Scriptures is changed, but that they are felt to be more luminous as we gain fresh power to bear the light.

Nothing is lost of that which has been once found in them, but partial interpretations are taken up, absorbed, transfigured, in others which embrace a little wider range.

The Substance of our Historic Belief Enexhaustible THE Christian teacher should from the first keep alive in himself, that he may keep it alive in others, the sense of the indefeasible vitality of his creed.

He must think and speak as one who is charged with the interpretation of a life to which every other form of being ministers, and not with the mere reiteration of stereotyped clauses.

He must watch and listen as knowing that every word which he has received has force within it to draw to itself new vigour from each conquest of inquiry.

The experience of our own personal progress shews how it is so. Christ is always the same, eternal, unchangeable. We confess Him in the same words from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to age, and yet do we not all know that the Holy Spirit which the Father sends in His name-in His

name, let us treasure up the marvellous promise-enables us to apprehend better what the confession of those truths signifies as we gain worthier notions of ourselves and of the world and of God?

Thus the course of our brief lives helps us to see that we must hold fast alike the absolute immutability of the principle of life in the Church, and the manifold progress of the manifestations of life.

Just as that which we each call "I" remains unchanged through all the vicissitudes of our material and moral being, so is it with the presence of Christ by the Spirit in that vaster body which He quickens through all its growth.

The truth was perceived when as yet it had gained but little illustration. Every one is familiar with the famous description of catholic belief: "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus." And there is another passage of the book from which this sentence is taken which, though it is less known, is far more fruitful in its application.

In answer to the question whether there is any progress in the Christian religion, Vincent replies :

“There is, and that enormous. . . . For who would wish men so ill . . . as to seek to hinder it? But it is a true progress and not a change. . . . The understanding, the scientific knowledge, the wisdom alike of individual Christians and of the whole Church, must grow and advance greatly from age to age, though the truth which they maintain does not lose its identity. . . The ancient doctrines of the heavenly philosophy cannot without profanation be altered or mutilated, but they may in process of time be shaped with greater care and delicacy. They may gain clearness, light, definiteness,

while they necessarily retain their fulness, their integrity, their essential character."

The words thus briefly paraphrased are remarkable words, and the events of fourteen hundred years have witnessed to their truth. The sixth, the ninth, the thirteenth, and sixteenth centuries have seen Christianity draw strength from what seemed to be danger. So will it be, if we are faithful, in the nineteenth.

How, indeed, can it be otherwise? For it is the glory of our historic Faith to have reunited in a sacramental bond the visible and the invisible, and, therefore, every advance in the knowledge of Nature, every lesson in the course of human affairs, must add something to our power of realising the things which we most certainly believe.

Progress not a Development but an Ellumination

THE progress which we desire, as being permanent

and fruitful, comes from bringing our creed, as we are encouraged to do, into the bracing air and bright sunshine of life.

The result is not so much a development as an illumination.

It is not that anything new is added to the original treasures of revelation, but that which was latent is realised.

Each great word, even the greatest, as man, and world, and God, and sin, and grace, becomes charged with new associations, enriched with new wealth of thought, tested by new trials of labour and suffering, and so fitted to carry on one degree farther the victories of Faith.

In the confidence that this great law will be realised through his ministry, the Christian teacher will approach

his work. Strange and startling voices may sound about him. Once and again he may be tempted to believe that they are only of the earth, earthy. But in the end, if he give heed to the lessons of the past, he will take heart to stand, though it be alone and in the gloom, and answer without impatience and without distrust, Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.

God Speaking to us

I BELIEVE that God is speaking to us as He has

not spoken to men for four centuries; and I believe that there is great danger lest we neglect His voice.

We are absorbed in our own interests and perils, and we fail to see that there is being accomplished around us a revolution in the conditions of thought, a revolution in the conditions of action, which, if unheeded now, will sooner or later shake our Faith to its foundations.

But I believe no less surely that we can shew that even here Christianity is in advance of the latest generalisations of science, and able, in virtue of what we know, to shape to noble issues the latent aspirations and tendencies of men.

All that is required of us is that we should turn once again to the first records of the Gospel and read there lessons which, in the order of God's providence, could not be read till this generation.

Let me endeavour to illustrate my meaning by two examples, one from speculation and the other from life.

There is, I suppose, no more characteristic result of physical research than the growing sense of the intimate

connection of all forms of being one with another, of the continuity and solidarity of existence, of the dependence of man upon man and upon the world.

As these facts are put forward they are often made to appear antagonistic to the Faith; and the over-hasty zeal of believers accepts the false interpretation.

But what is the case? From the beginning of the Bible to the end, from the record of the making of the heavens and the earth in Genesis to the vision of the new heaven and the new earth in the Apocalypse, the mysterious unity of creation is shadowed forth.

Every political student, whether in hope, or fear, or simple acquiescence, points to the fact that the whole current of affairs is setting towards democracy.

I accept the conclusion without discussing it; and what then? If it be true, I see in it an opportunity for the greatest work which the Church of Christ has ever been summoned to do.

No other power can deal efficiently with the problems which will arise out of democratic society, because no other power can take account of man as man, in all his strength and in all his weakness, as one who is heir of time and heir of eternity.

In the Middle Ages Christianity was the effectual protector of the poor, and it has not yet lost the virtue by which it can interpret and fulfil their wants.

Even now our Faith alone can give an intelligible meaning to the triple watchword which for three generations has charmed them with vain hopes.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

FOR us Christians, if only we have strength given us to learn and to teach the lesson, Liberty is the power