then the defection of one or another would make little difference to the general result; but if, as we see it must be, the faithlessness of one subtracts from the whole that which no other can supply, all is changed; we feel at once the overwhelming majesty of life even in its ultimate details.

Many Gifts-One Spirit

THERE is something very sublime and at the same time very awful in the thought of the marvellous complexity of our modern life, even in its outward aspects; and if we penetrate below the surface and come to feel that the same law holds in the spiritual as in the material relations of men, we shall readily acknowledge that we are in the presence of a truth which it concerns us most nearly to apprehend as far as we can do so.

If religion be the most complete harmony of life with the seen and the unseen, the modes in which it will be embodied will vary with the varying modes of life.

All the causes which tend to stereotype or separate narrow our lives, tend equally to stereotype and separate and narrow our religion.

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And if, on the other hand, we see that by the counsel of the Divine Love the highest forms of earthly good spring from the co-operation of the most diverse elements, so we believe is it also in religion.

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There is an essential difference in all lives, and there is in them also, by the gift of God, an essential unity.

The law of progressive variety is forced upon us by all the conditions under which we act and think.

It is called into play equally by the natural endowments with which we are born, and by the circumstances under which we use our powers.

It is the spring of all that is most impressive in national character: it is the spring of all that is most energetic in personal influence.

A great people stamps the history of the world with the impress of its special traits.

A great man sways his fellows by the gifts through which he differs from them.

There is nothing from which a true patriot would shrink more than from the endeavour to obliterate the marks which represent in his countrymen all the issues of the past. They may be transformed, ennobled, transfigured, but in them lies the pledge that the nation has still something to do for the race.

Remove the difference, slender it may be, by which citizen is distinguished from citizen, and something is lost to the fulness of the body which nothing can replace.

External equality is uniform degradation.

But while this principle is acknowledged unhesitatingly in social and political life, we do not commonly apply it to religious life. Religion is regarded as something

abstract, uniform, colourless. Here it is supposed that the rich variety of function which marks the development of man finds no place. He is unclothed, to use St. Paul's image, and not clothed upon, that so he may fulfil his highest work.

We suddenly abandon the law which has guided the magnificent growth of life when it approaches its last fulfilment.

We trust to no generous spontaneity when we come as sons to our heavenly Father. We painfully mould and repress ourselves after one fashion; and enemies say, not without the semblance of excuse, that our religion looks traditional, formal, dead, powerless to

claim all human interests for its domain, all human faculties for its instruments.

And still if we reflect that what we are called upon to offer to God is nothing less than ourselves, our souls and bodies, it must at once be seen that in that perfect, holy, living sacrifice is included every element of character, of endowment, of circumstance, by which each one of us is made to differ from others.

Other offices may appear to us to be more fruitful than our own: we may wish for an ampler field on which to shew the devotion which we sincerely feel: our time, we may argue, is so engrossed by necessary routine that all nobler aspirations are dulled.

But if followed to their spring such thoughts come simply from faithlessness and impatience.

The results of silent service, of complete self-surrender, of patient trust, cannot be measured by our present experience. They survive us on earth, and they follow us before the very throne of God.

We work each in our own way with untiring and truthful effort, and because we do so, a higher unity is possible. There can be no unity in an aggregate of

atoms.

Our diversity of gifts is reconciled in one supreme destination.

Our religion finds its true expression in the consecration of our special gifts.

All our natural endowments, all our personal histories, all our contrasted circumstances, are so many opportunities for peculiar work.

We are all different, and therefore we may be one. We are all united in Christ, and therefore, unless we be unfaithful, we must be one.

The Gospel of Christ's Death and Resurrection IN the Gospel, as the Apostle calls it, of Christ's Death

and Christ's Resurrection we stand; by that we are saved. It accompanies us from the beginning of our lives to the end. It is the voice which welcomes the unconscious infant to his Saviour's love: it is the voice which commits the unconscious dead to his Maker's keeping.

The message of the Resurrection which the apostles were charged to proclaim has lost none of its significance, but we, I think, perplexed by the necessary growth of later thoughts, are often in danger of missing the grandeur of its simple outline.

At least the unnatural barriers of separation which we all fix in various degrees between parts of our duties and our pleasures: the conventional banishment of our highest desires from ordinary intercourse: the unreal triviality which first veils and then smothers passionate longings for sympathy: the sense of weakness which drives us in upon ourselves: the sense of weariness which forces us again to frivolity; shew that we have not yet fully learnt the lessons which it can teach, or the strength which it can give; for the faith in the Resurrection can harmonise life: can inspire life: can transform life.

There is about us on every side, in the midst of much that is simply ostentatious and false and selfish, a restless striving for the truth, a stern impatience of hypocrisy, an eager desire to do something to raise the masses of men to their proper dignity. And in the meantime popular religion seems to stand aside from these great stirrings of national life. Adversaries even venture to urge that Christianity is, at least in certain aspects, hostile to truth, to sincerity, to freedom. The sphere of its action and

its hopes is said to be transferred by tacit consent to a remote region, inaccessible even to the imagination.

So true it is that at first we neglect our gifts, and then we deny them.

Our first prayer teaches us to ask not that we may be transferred into the kingdom of God, but that the kingdom of God may come among us.

We are placed, as it were, in the presence of a veiled glory. The practised eye can habitually pierce beneath. the covering, and even we of duller vision come to feel, first perhaps in seasons of darkness, the reality of its effulgence.

In a word, heaven is not for us so much a "yonder towards which we have to move, as a here" which we have to realise.

If we try to form a distinct conception of what we call vaguely our soul, we shall find that we include in the idea all the details of circumstance and action and feeling and thought which go to make up that which we feel to be ourselves.

We know each how, as life goes on, its stream grows stained and turbid. Dark memories from distant years come unbidden and mingle with its current. We cannot

stay the source once opened.

And for the infinite future, is there then no release, no restoration, no purifying power? Must we for ever carry with us not only the impress of the past, but that ever-springing fount of sorrow, if not of sin, which lies in the bitter recollection of good neglected or of evil done?

The answer comes to us from the Cross and from the sepulchre. Beloved now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that,