sounds harsh and resentful; perhaps others have not found it such bad food after all.

9th January 1879.

... I do not know that I can tell you anything more than is contained in two sentences from the Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family: "I feel an atom—but an atom in a solid, God-governed world, where truth is mightiest; insignificant in myself as the little mosses which flutter on these ancient stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock which cannot be shaken—the rock of God's providence and love." "God's common gifts are His most precious; and His most precious gifts—even life itself—have no root in themselves; not that they are without root: they are better rooted in the depths of His unchangeable love. Henceforth let me be content with the only security Dr. Luther says God will ever give us—the security of His presence and care." "I will never leave thee." And yet one longs to be less than moss, to be a part of the rock itself; that it may not be I that live, but Christ that liveth in me—that death might be swallowed up of life.

7th March 1879.

... It seems that I'm beginning to learn that it is little use expecting to get messages for others, or be able to help them or speak a word in season unless "we make mention of them continually in our prayers," and give up trying to monopolise the Holy Ghost for particular times; i.e. the Holy Ghost objects to being a respecter of persons at any time. It remains therefore to pray for you strongly that you may be filled with a knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding quite up to the mark of "rejoicing alway," for this is the will of God concerning us.... The verse that brings me soonest to the self-despair point is this: "Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world"; the standpoint of "workers together with God" is a strong one—"it lifts, it bears my drooping soul." To do the will of God, surely this is to abide for ever....

8th February 1880.

He begins with two Scripture quotations: one from the Septuagint—"the Lord preserveth the infants," in the English "the Lord preserveth the simple"; the other—"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

It has been an experience of the past week, which I am now beginning dimly to recognise, that the child and the child-spirit are necessary elements of the presence of the kingdom—as necessary as they are for entrance into the kingdom.

And the kingdom consists in the keeping; in conscious, clearer, simpler on-leading in the life of Christ. I am kept because I am a child—when I cease to be kept it is because I become a rebellious child; and of this kingdom and peace there has been no end to-day—there is therefore no hindrance (save a divided will) to its continuance, and thus one is led into the faith of the Son of God—that our brothers are not orphans, and that prayer and work must in this faith overcome the world.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be present continually to energise in us this faith, and to work in us all the good pleasure of His will.

And so, beloved friends, with these words of his own we conclude our testimony to him; we keep this Memorial of the Blessed Dead, not sorrowing, as those do who have no hope; if we grieve at all, it is that our love was so sparing of the spikenard wherewith we should have anointed him to his burial.

Requiescit in pace.

"Thou has made him most blessed for ever, Thou has made him exceeding glad with Thy countenace."

[1] In Memoriam, Arthur George William Neale, B.A. (St. John's College), who passed through the veil 1st July 1880. Aged 22 years.

II

BELIEVING AND BECOMING

"To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name."—JOHN i. 12.

John soon gets away from abstract theology and takes the soul up into the mount of contemplation, from which it may discern the length and breadth of the land of promise and privilege. He knew that our faith was not only "Emmanuel, God with us"; but that if we had the skill and could read the word backwards, we might say,—"and we also with God." He begins his Gospel, "the Word was with God "; he goes on, "the Word was with man"; and then he completes the triangle by saying, "and man also with God"; for "to as many as received Him, He gave power to become the children of God." And again, later on, in the seventeenth chapter, we have the thoughts, "I in them," and "Thou in Me," and "they also in Us," until one is left in a delightful perplexity as to the nearness of God to His creatures, and obliged to say that—

God is never so far off
As even to be near;
He dwells within, the spirit is
The home He holds most dear.

His faith was not merely that the Word became flesh that He might bring God to us, but the Word living and suffering that He might bring us to God; His religion not merely the humiliation of the Creator, but, in a very real sense, the exaltation of the creature and practical union with the Lord of the spirits of all flesh; not only that He for our sakes became poor, but also, that we through His poverty might be made rich. It is into this riches of our inheritance that we want to look this evening.

Do we know what it is to have not only a heaven in prospect but also one in possession, and to see in Christ a High Priest of good things present as well as of good things to come? It seems to me that in this passage the Religion of Jesus is presented to us in two lights: (i.) as believing and receiving; (ii.) as believing and becoming. Some people stop short with believing and do not receive. But our faith is certainly an appropriative faculty; a sort of hand of the soul that can be stretched out to take hold of God's offered gifts; or to link itself on to God's hand outstretched to guide us. Of what use would a hand be that never grasped anything? Perhaps some promise stands out before us, telling us His Mind, or it may have been impressed upon us by His Spirit. Even from a weak faith we can obtain promises; because faith apprehends the nature of God; and as soon as we begin to apprehend that, we see that certain things ought to happen, and ere long these things shape themselves into definite promises which faith applies. So the life is one of believing and receiving; and as our faith pleads the promises, and the appropriative power of the soul is exercised, we find the kingdom of God come to us not in word but in power. But our religion is also believing and becoming; "that as many as received Him might become the children of God, even those who believe in His name." Much of our faith, so-called, is only a beating of the air, and not really an advancement of the soul; we profess a great deal which has no practical bearing on our own lives. Yet all true believing is becoming, and a man cannot be a follower of the Lamb, in the real sense of the term, without his becoming moment by moment a different man; he alters his stature, not indeed by taking thought thereunto, but even as the lilies grow; and adding together the receiving and the becoming, we find that we are the children of God.

Hence it appears that our faith is not a single definite act, done,