and done with; but one done and gone on with. And our faith is to be not only definite, but progressive and increasing, leading us from grace to grace, from strength to strength, and from glory to glory.

If we take a stranger to view the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, it is possible that he will say that the outside is the finest part of it, and that it looks best from a distance; or he may say that the entrance-hall, with its display of coloured marbles and polished granite, is the best part of the museum. Certainly there are many that look at Christianity in this manner; thinking it perhaps a magnificent ideal of life, especially as seen in history; or perhaps as seen at some distance, as we view Sunday from the other days of the week. And others there are who think that the entrance of the Christian life is the best part of it, who say honestly from experience that the beginning of the life was the best for them. The reason being that they stopped there; otherwise people never could think that the happiest part of the life was that immediately consequent on conversion; for in reality the path of the just is a shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day. It is not like one of those ancient Egyptian temples of which one reads, in which we pass from daylight to shade as we enter, and into deeper gloom as we approach the secret shrine.

The life of faith—progressive, increasing faith—is a motion in a straight line, and not in a closed curve; it is not like an Irish penance around a sacred well where one makes progress with the final result of being where you started, and, perhaps, ready for another revolution, as, indeed, it must appear to some Christians whose circle is a week and whose starting-point a Sunday. Neither is it like the pilgrimage up Pilate's staircase at Rome, in which the pain of going up on one's knees is only varied by the discomfort of coming down again and finding ourselves just about where we were before, as it must appear to some good people who live the up-and-down life. It is an upward and onward life; on our knees, if you will, but upward and upward and, like the stairs in Ezekiel's vision, still upward. And the Scriptures encourage us forward, bidding us leave the word of the beginning of Christ and go (not crawl) on unto perfection.

"He gave the power to become the children of God"; the margin suggests "right" or "privilege." Theologically this seems a high calling; but we are not to deny things because they are high. "The devil's darling sin is the pride that apes humility," and this affectation of humility is one of the ways in which souls are constantly kept out of blessing; it has been so throughout the history of the Church. In the matter of the forgiveness of sins, it is not so long since people said that if a man knew his sins were forgiven, it would make him conceited; and some people still hold it to be a presumption; at other times that eternal life, which consists in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is denied; because it is presumptuous for a man to say that he knows God in the same simple matter-of-fact way that he is acquainted with a friend. And nowadays this spiritual affectation takes the form of the denial of holiness, because, if you were kept from sin, you would be sure to be proud of it; as if God were likely to humble a man and make his heart a temple of His own, and then suffer him to be lifted up over the fact. They do not seem to see the contradiction. The Lord is pretty sure to humble us a good deal before He gives us anything to be proud of. People say it is presumptuous to be "blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke," and more humble—to be something else. Humility is one of those things that lie right in the line of our obedience; or, as a dear friend once said to me,—"the righteousness I am striving after, includes humility."

It is a false humility that refuses those good things which God has laid up for those who love Him. The true humility says, when the Lord has made a feast and bidden His guests, "I shall go and take the lowest place"; but the affected humility says, "Oh! it's too good for me; I shall sit down outside"; and so, practically, it becomes numbered amongst those of whom it is said, "They shall not taste of My supper." We need to be like Paul, ready to take our place amongst the saints, though less than the least of them; or it may be among the apostles, though not worthy to be called an apostle.

God gives us power for what He wants us to be; i.e. power for the next step; and all our future life is conditioned upon that. We say, "Increase our faith," and He says, "Exercise the faith you have." We must exercise the lower power before we attain to the higher. Suppose there is a powerful steam-engine which is able to do for you a year's work in a day: it is a reservoir of power, but the power is conditioned upon the exercise of a lower power; you must bring coals and fetch water and make up fire, and by and by the power becomes accessible to you. He that is faithful in least is faithful also in much; we must be faithful to the light already given us, faithful to our powers of love, thought, and obedience, if we are to be brought to the reception of the power in which saints have walked.

Using the marginal suggestion, we have the right given us to be children of God. We hear much nowadays of people standing on their rights,—on rights real and rights imagined; we have our rights against the enemy of souls; oh! that we would insist on them, and that we would realise how the powers of darkness fly when we look to God bravely and confidently for the promised help.

What is involved in thus becoming a child of God? Well, for one thing, God is pledged to love us just as much as He loves Christ. We sometimes get the idea into our minds that God loves us in a sort of afterthought manner, as a superfluous or unnecessary part of creation. I have found out that He loves us just as much as He loves Christ; Jesus Himself said—"Father, Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me."

Was Christ's consciousness of the love of God a mere wavering thing, perhaps known only at critical times; or was it not rather His vital breath and native air? "I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am"; and "the only-begotten Son is in the bosom of the Father."

Another side of this privilege is that we may be kept from sin. Three passages I call to mind in which the children of the Highest are spoken of: one is in Matt. v. 45: "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." It goes on—"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Another is in 2 Cor. vi. 18; "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty." It goes on—"Having these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord." The third is in 1 John iii. 1: "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God"; and the best reading continues—"and we are so"; it continues with "purifieth himself as He is pure," and "he that abideth in Him sinneth not."

Finally, does it seem a contradiction in terms to talk of becoming a child? it is indeed hard to turn the streams of life backward and make them return to their source: a long way back, too, for some of us; again we take comfort from the Scripture, and remember that "when he was yet a great way off, his father ran and fell on his neck and kissed him."

III

GLEAMING AS CRYSTAL

"And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, gleaming as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."—REV. xxii. 1.

If we are to understand the New Jerusalem properly, we almost need to have been citizens of the Old. On this