summer, like everything that is quickened by the breath of God. Tribute! We are always perplexing ourselves about tribute—a steady stream of regular contributions, a flood-tide of golden gifts. It is our measure of power. Quite other is Christ's. His power flashes like lightning from one part under heaven, and shineth to the other part which is under heaven. The world flashes into light, glows into life in a moment, when the times of refreshing, of quickening, come down from God. Men catch it from each other's eyes, each other's lips. It spreads as flame, and gathers strength as it widens its circuit. Money, social and political influence, the force of this world, all that seems solid and potent to men while they are enacting the masque of life which we call living, faint back like rushlights in the lightning's flash, like aged institutions in the hour of revolution, when the breath of the Spirit as at Pentecost is falling on the world. I speak, and I am quite sure the sacred writers spoke, in no scorn of money. No thing is base: we keep our hate, our scorn, for base spirits, not for things. But for money Paul must have starved, and the kingdom must have perished in its birth. What the Lord means us to understand is that money is the inevitable satellite of higher things. Spirits in earnest movement sweep it with them in their course, as the earth sweeps its atmosphere. Give us hearts of fire, fire that kindles and flashes from heart to heart, from peak to peak of the human; and what work will wait long for gold? Men who in common levels of interest dole out their tens and hundreds, and feel some dull glow of satisfaction stirring the stagnation of their hearts, scatter forth their thousands when God fires their spirits, and their whole being is alive and thrills with joy. Money! nothing greatly spiritual was ever made by money, or was ever marred by money in this world.

There is a touch of scorn in the Saviour's words, "Shew me the tribute money." Scorn of the vain worldly mind that was perplexing itself about tribute, while the love of God and the belief in judgment were fast dying out of human hearts. One sacred conviction in their hearts would have answered the question, and lifted them above the sphere of tribute—as Paul was lifted—into the region of that kingdom which would sweep Cæsar's as a satellite in its sphere. Did the Lord foresee sadly the scene from which a few dark days divided them, when they would yield to Cæsar—these men, who were groaning and haggling over the tribute—absolutely everything that was God's? (John xix. 7-16).

The leader of the band who turned the world upside down witnessed this confession, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." They were poor as beggars, but richer in power to draw forth the treasures of this world than kings. What king's command could have wrought this miracle? "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common." (Acts iv. 32.) In truth, this love of Christ is the universal solvent. Nothing remains any man's own when once the heart is touched by this Divine fire. It melts all selfish separations and appropriations, as sun warmth the bonds of winter, and quickens in the universal human heart the glow and circulation of the spring. Nothing starves in summer for want of the bread that perishes; supplies lie thick everywhere around. And no Divine work stays for lack of the gold that perishes, when once the sun of the Divine love has loosed men's hearts from the winter of their isolation and selfish grasping care. Don't worry about the tribute. "Trust in the Lord, and do good," and things will right themselves at once. Tribute will pour into the treasury, and even the exactors shall become ministers and yield their willing aid. "Thine officers shall become peace, and thine exactors righteousness." "Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers." "Violence shall be no more heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders," if the King is in thy palaces; if thy heart, soul, and hand are loyally devoted to Christ. I often think, in these days of grand Christian institutions, with their vast fixed incomes and endowments, and all the magnificent apparatus without which it seems to us the Lord's kingdom must perish out of this land and out of the world, of the little company who trudged wearily about the highways of Palestine, seeking their morning meal from the fig-tree by the wayside, and lodging wherever a poor cottager's faith and love gave them shelter for a night, and who,—beggars as to the things which were Cæsar's, but filled as never men were filled before or since with the things which were God's, faith, hope, joy, truth, wisdom, and Divine charity—went forth in this their might and re-made society: the grandest revolution in the history of this universe, accomplished by its beggars and, as the world thought, its fools. And the fact repeats itself in every revolution. Let a man in any age go forth with the fire of God in him; and the force he wields, the mastery he wins, the new life he quickens in a nation, in a world, pours silent contempt on gold. The gold is gathered, as spirit gathers flesh about it and becomes incarnate; so all that belongs to Cæsar's sphere is at the commandment of that which comes straight from God's and glows with the inspiration of His life. Gifts of a splendid lavishness in such seasons are abundant; and strangely enough the givers feel enriched unspeakably by the joy of giving, enlarged immeasurably by impoverishment, and increased by abnegation. The richest in such seasons are those who give most, not those who have most. A wonderful sense of the glorious wealth of a heart which has a guest-chamber for Christ, and whose pulses beat joyously as the free tide of the Divine love flows through and over it on all around, kindles men's souls to a new conception of riches. It fills the beatitudes with a wonderful meaning, and shows the sorrows and straits of poverty overflowed by the riches and joys of God.

III.
"UNTO THIS LAST."