They increase our obligations: they do not compensate for our failures. Do we keep before our minds as a fact that every endowment of sense and reason and intuition belongs to the undying fulness of our nature, and that we shall carry all these with their fruits of use and misuse before the judgment-seat of God? We to whom large opportunities of study are given, we to whom the office of teachers is given, are bound to strive to gain the widest prospects of the Truth. We dishonour no less than endanger our deposit when we limit its application to the narrow wants which we can see or feel. We cannot, perhaps, determine from our own limited experience why this is written or that, why we must believe this or that. The whole experience of humanity will be required before that can be clear. But of this we can be sure, that as long as we guard scrupulously the unproved wealth of the Gospel, we shall find ourselves prepared for any revolution of science or history. It needs but little reflection to find that this is so in the crisis of our own age. Christ and the teaching of Physicists PHYSICISTS tell us, with an air of triumph, that man's highest powers are dependent upon his material frame that he cannot truly exist apart from it. : Christ told us so long ago, and guarded the truth from exaggeration, though we may not before have felt the full significance of His Message, when He raised His Body from the grave to the right hand of God in token of His victory over Death. Physicists tell us that the dead rule the living, that man is bound to man by an inexorable law. Christ told us so long ago, when He presented the relation of Himself to His disciples as that of the Vine and Branches, of which each part is energetic and fruitful by the ministry of all according to the operation of one life. Physicists tell us that we are but fragments of a vast whole which, though we may seek to isolate ourselves from it with a vain pride, yet cannot be separated from our destiny. Christ told us so long ago, when by the mouth of His Apostle He spoke of the summing up, the reconciliation of all things in Himself as the Divine purpose before the foundation of the world and, as it seems to me, essentially independently of the Fall. From Strength to Strength (84th Psalm) It is not necessary to attempt to fix the exact circum The stances under which these words were written. Psalter in its spiritual fulness belongs to no special time; and this Psalm is the hymn of the Divine life in all ages. It brings before us the grace and the glory of sacrifice, of service, of progress, where God alone, the Lord of Hosts, is the source and the strength and the end of effort. It is true now, and it is true always, that the voice of faith repeats, as in old time, through loneliness, through labour, through sorrow, its unchanging strain from strength to strength. A Northumbrian saint, it is said, carried up into Heaven in a trance, heard the same thanksgiving rendered by a choir of angels before the Throne of God. It must be so. The Lord God is a sun to illuminate, and a shield to protect. In the pilgrimage of worship that which is personal becomes social. The trust of the believer passes into the trust of the Church. The expectation of one is fulfilled in the joy of all. If the travellers grow weary on their way, it is that they may find unexpected refreshment; if they faint, it is that they may feel the new power which requickens them. They go from strength to strength; every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. The law of life, personal and universal, as God has willed, is summed up in this-from strength to strength. It is not true of men, and it is not true of humanity, that their sad journey is ever farther from the East. If they move westward, it is with the light, and again towards the light. Without dissembling or extenuating the effects of sin, without forgetting the dark mysteries and open sorrows which hang over generations, centuries, continents, we dare to repeat the sentence-not, indeed, in exultation, and yet without doubt, as the lesson of the past-from strength to strength. A great Society needs great Edeas A GREAT society cannot exist without great ideas; and great ideas perish unless they find worthy utterance. To organise is not to rule: merely to repeat a formula is not to instruct. The ruler must grasp the just proportion of the objects and duties of government; he must measure the wants and capacities of all his subjects; he must develop vital powers and not simply marshal them; he must never lose sight of his ideal while he does the little which is within his reach. The teacher must be ready to bring out of his treasure things new as well as old; he must never be weary of translating into the current idiom the thoughts which his ancestors have mastered, and never backward to welcome the fresh voices of later wisdom. The growing Complexity of Life unfavourable to IT is a natural consequence of our restless and busy life that we are turned by multitudinous details from the steady contemplation of the broad aspects of things. It is easier to crowd the day with little duties than to spend it in the silent study of enigmas which yield no immediate answer. But the issue is already seen to be disastrous. We hear it said that "a large part of the business of the wise is to counteract the efforts of the good." And meanwhile the growing complexity of life brings widespread hesitancy and doubt and moral relaxation. We feel ourselves, if it be but for rare moments, that there are whole regions of life on which we have not looked; and we tremble at the phantoms with which we unconsciously people them. Our Universities discipline the Spiritual Counsellor OUR ancient universities supply with singular fulness the discipline which may train the spiritual counsellor. Nowhere else, I believe, is a generous sympathy with every form of thought and study more natural or more effective; nowhere else is it equally easy to gauge the rising tide of opinion and feeling which will prevail after us; nowhere else is there in equal measure that loyal enthusiasm which brings the highest triumphs of faith Iwithin the reach of labour. He who has striven there towards the ideal of student and teacher will have gained powers fitted for a larger use. He who has lived in communion with the greatest minds of all ages will not be hasty to make his own thoughts the measure of truth. N He who has watched the specious transformation of assertion into fact will not withdraw anything from rigorous inquiry. Not one acquisition of toilsome research will be unfruitful in lessons of patient endurance. Not one rule of exact criticism will be unserviceable in fixing the limits of possible knowledge. The character of a scholar has in its direct force infinitely greater power than any product of his skill. Literary work, however perfect, reflects in some degree the passing temper of the age; but character enters into the very depths of life, quickening, moulding, inspiring: the one is a fair building, the other is a tree whose seed is in itself. The Church and Social Problems NOTHING but our Faith can deal finally with the problems of democracy. I know no problem of society which the Gospel is not able to illuminate. It proclaims the true basis of fellowship in the Incarnation ; it ennobles and concentrates the many offices which are united in one body; it reveals the abiding supremacy of character, which is independent of the accidental circumstances of life. Nor may we stop here; for I will not shrink from adding that the English Church seems to me to be marked out by its history, by its inheritance, by its constitution, reaching through all classes, in contact with all religions, in sympathy with all truth, able in St. Paul's sense to become all things to all men, as destined by God to give expression to the social Gospel for which we are waiting. Such a Gospel lies in Christianity; such an office appears to be committed to our Church; and as yet we have not acknowledged it. Can we then wonder that we are met by sad doubts and suspicions, that we are charged with insincerity, that we are disheartened by the sense of a mission |