feel that in himself he has not reached and cannot reach that for which he was born, that which the spirit of divine discontent within him, a discontent made keener by temporal success, still marks as his one goal of peace. For when Augustine said, Tu nos fecisti ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te, he proclaimed a fact to which every soul bears witness in the silence of its self-communings.

We know that we were made for God; we know that we have been separated from God; we know that we cannot acquiesce in the desolation of that divorce.

The Enstitution of the Priesthood

THE institution of the priesthood has been misused, degraded, overlaid with terrible superstitions, but in its essence it corresponds with the necessities of our nature. Therefore it has been interpreted and fulfilled in the Bible.

We can yet learn much from the figures of the Levitical system in which the priesthood of this world was fashioned by the Spirit of God in a form of marvellous significance and beauty. The law of the priestly service in the Old Testament is indeed a vivid parable of the needs, the aim, the benediction of human life.

The King-priest

THE kingly and priestly offices cannot be kept apart.

He who makes atonement must direct action. He who demands the complete service of every power must hallow the powers of which He claims the ministry. The ruler who consecrates, the priest who rules, must be merciful and faithful; He must have absolute authority and perfect sympathy; authority that He may represent God to

man, sympathy that He may represent man to God. And such is Christ made known to us, King and Priest, Priest after the order of Melchisedek, in whose mysterious person the old world on the edge of a new dispensation met and blessed the father of the faithful.

The apostolic words are true for us, true while there is one sin to vex the overburdened conscience, one struggle to strain the feeble will, such a High Priest be

came us.

If human priests compassed with infirmity could inspire confidence in the worshipper, then Christ, if we will lift our eyes to Him, a thousandfold more. Their compassion was necessarily limited by their experience, but His experience covers the whole field of life; their gentle bearing was tempered by the consciousness of failure, but His breathes the invigorating spirit of perfect holiness. They knew the power of temptation in part by the sad lessons of failure; He knew it to the uttermost by perfect victory. They could see dimly through earth-born mists something of the real hideousness of evil; He saw it in the undimmed light of the Divine purity. And He is tenderest, not who has sinned, as is sometimes vainly thought, but who has known best the power of sin by overcoming it. His love is most watchful who has seen what wrong is in the eyes of God.

Can we not then boldly proclaim that here also the Gospel covers the facts of life? that in the prospect of the conflicts and defeats which sadden us, and which we dare not disguise or extenuate, such a High Priest became us, strong with the strength of God, compassionate with the affection of a friend?

We must cling to both these truths, and wrestle with them and win their blessing from them.

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"Earth's Children cling to Earth"

EARTH'S children cling to earth," and there are many among us who feel keenly the very trials which the Hebrews felt; who long for some visible system which shall "bring all heaven before their eyes," for some path to the divine presence along which they can walk by sight, for recurrent words of personal absolution from some human minister, for that which shall localise their centre of worship; who labour, often unconsciously, to make the earthly the measure of the spiritual; who shrink from the ennobling responsibility of striving with untiring effort to hold communion with the unseen and eternal; who turn back with regretful looks to the discipline and the helps of a childly age, when they are required to accept the graver duties of maturity; required to listen, as it were, like Elijah on the lonely mountain, when the thunder of the earthquake is stilled and the violence of the fire is spent, for the still small voice.

These are not, I know, imaginary temptations; but if we are tried and disquieted by their assaults, the writer of the Epistle enables us to face them. He brings Christ near to us, and he brings us near to Christ. He discloses the privileges to which we are all admitted by the ascended Saviour. He gives an abiding application to the Lord's words, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. And He does this without hiding one dark trait in the prospect of life.

The Spectacle of divided and rival Churches THE spectacle of divided and rival Churches is as sad and far vaster than the spectacle of unbelieving Israel. It is hard for us to bear the prospect of Christendom rent into hostile fragments as it was hard for the Hebrews to bear the anathema of their country

men. It is hard to look for peace, and to find a sword; to look for the concentration of every force of those who bear Christ's name in a common assault upon evil, and to find energies of thought and feeling and action .weakened and wasted in misunderstandings, jealousies, and schisms; to look for the beauty of a visible unity of the faithful which shall strike even those who are without with reverent awe, and to find our divisions a commonplace with mocking adversaries. It is hard; and if what

we see were all, the trial would be intolerable.

But what we see is not all: the dim image of that which is.

what we see is not even

The life which we feel,

the life which we share, is more than the earthly materials by which it is at present sustained, more than the earthly vestures through which it is at present manifested.

That is not most real which can be touched and measured, but that which struggles, as it were, to find imperfect expression through the veil of sense: that which to the All-seeing Eye gilds with the light of self-devotion acts that to us appear self-willed and miscalculated; that which to the All-hearing Ear joins in a full harmony words that to us sound fretful and impatient; that which fills our poor dull hearts with a love and sympathy towards all the creatures of God, deeper than just hatred of sin, deeper than right condemnation of error, deeper than the circumstances of birth and place and temperament which kindle the friendships and sharpen the animosities of human intercourse.

If the outward were the measure of the Church of Christ, we might well despair. But side by side with us, when we fondly think, like Elijah, that we stand alone, are countless multitudes whom we know not, angels whom we have no power to discern, children of God whom we have not learnt to recognise.

How we may become one

WE shall become one, not by narrowing and defining the Faith which is committed to us, but by rising, through the help of the Spirit, to a worthier sense of its immeasurable grandeur.

How the first Christians conquered the World THE character of a generation is moulded by personal

character. And if we have considered some of the temptations of the first Christians; if we know a little of the terrible environment of evil by which they were encircled; we must not, as we too often do, forget how they conquered the world.

It was not by any despairing withdrawal from city and market; not by any proud isolation in selfish security; not by any impatient violence; but by the winning influence of gracious faith, they mastered the family, the school, the empire. They were a living Gospel, a message of God's good-will to those with whom they toiled and suffered.

Pure among the self-indulgent, loving among the factious, tender among the ruthless, meek among the vainglorious, firm in faith amidst the shaking of nations, joyous in hope amidst the sorrows of a corrupt society, they revealed to men their true destiny, and shewed that it could be attained.

They appealed boldly to the awakened conscience as the advocate of their claims. They taught as believing that He who had stirred their heart with a great desire would assuredly satisfy it.

They offered not in word but in deed the ideal of spiritual devotion, and "the soul naturally Christian" turned to it, as the flower turns to the light, drew from