but both were little influenced by them. They were awed but not convinced, amazed but not converted. Why?

If a false

They applied a principle referred to in their law. prophet arose among them, working miracles, trying to lead them away, they were to consider it a trial of their fidelity and steadfastness, not an evidence of Divinity or Messiahship. The maxim was difficult of application, required extreme caution, great discrimination; it was dangerous in the hands of vain, unscrupulous men. But the priests, with the confidence of their class, had no fear, saw not the slightest danger. They applied it to Christ, and so the miracles fell powerless. With the people they were no proof of Divinity. Prophets and saintly men in days gone by had performed them, and they were not Divine. Might it not be the same with Him?

But the miracles of Jesus draw attention to His character and claim. The one throws light upon the other. A miracle of itself proves nothing. No quantity of miraculous power proves anything but its own existence. There must be some assertion, some claim put forth, before there can be anything for the miracle to verify or guarantee. In Christ's case there was a great and exceptional claim. He claimed to be one with the Father-one with God. The prophets wrought miracles, but they claimed only delegated power, repudiated the thought that it was of themselves. They acted by the authority of another. Jesus asserted that the power was of Himself, inherent, not delegated. No one before Christ claimed Divinity, so their miracles could not be an evidence of it. But Jesus claimed it, and so the miracles become a guarantee of it, proof of the truth of the assertion. The miracles are understood through the claim, and the claim is verified by the miracles. The people could not come up to the thought of His Divinity, and so they could not understand His miracles. In degrading the person they degraded the works. In looking upon Christ only as a man, or even as a prophet, they looked upon the works only as wonders, nothing

more.

The Divinity of Jesus is the key that unlocks the treasures of the Gospel. It created Christianity, gave it its power and

M

permanency. It was not the miracles, however great they be, that created the moral force, the spiritual influence which is gradually permeating society, restraining passion, and lifting men up to higher conceptions of life and duty, that fascinated and sustained the thought of the disciples everywhere, that changed the rude, unlettered fishermen into the fearless pioneers and dauntless missionaries that they were, and that is still drawing men and women of every nation out of the degradation of despair and sin into the purity and blessedness of a saintly life. Nor was it the blamelessness of His character. Nor was it His teaching. True, never man spake like Him; but, taken alone, the highest and holiest teaching might have seemed to men to be no more than the inspiration of a prophet, the words of highest genius. Nor was it His death. What gave power to the death, changed the despised cross into a moral power, gave to an ignominious death such a stupendous spiritual significance? He predicted, no doubt, that His death would draw all men unto Him, but who was He that His death should do so? Nor was it His resurrection. It did much; confirmed a hope, became witness to a great truth beyond itself, but the moral power of Christianity springs not from the fact that one rose from the dead, but from the character of the person who rose. None of these things, nor all of them, will account for the influence of Christ in Christianity. Beyond the miracles, and the teaching, and the death, and the resurrection, beyond all separate facts and incidents, another truth, in whose light all other things are explained and justified, is discerned, namely, the Person of the Lord Himself. It is not the miracles, but the Worker; not the character but its living Subject; not the teaching, but the Teacher; not even the death, nor the resurrection, but He who died and rose, upon whom Christian faith ultimately rests, and the Christian religion is permanently founded. The power of Christianity lies in the personality of Jesus, in the fact that He was Emmanuel, God with us, in reality and not in name "the Son of the living God."

DUNDEE, N. B.

JONATHAN ROEBUCK.

Christian Hope.

'AND EVERY MAN THAT HATH THIS HOPE IN HIM PURIFIETH HIMSELF, EVEN AS HE IS PURE."-1 John iii. 3.

In the first years of the Church human hate found vent in murderous onslaughts on Christian teachers.

The Church had weathered many a storm when John wrote this epistle. Each storm had left its mark. The Church had been depleted of its chiefs. Stephen, James, Paul, Peter, had gone home to be crowned. John only had escaped. He was providentially living on. He had special work to do for Jesus. John waits for the ordeal and honour of martyrdom, until he has uttered his all-sufficient protest against the fanciful scepticism which denied his humanity, and until he had written his impregnable gospel on the Lord's Divinity. Who so able to do these two things as the disciple who leaned his head upon His bosom, and who realized most of the under-currents of His life? John lived to this sorrowful necessity.

The severe language of the apostle makes it clear that he saw the evil of doubtful disputations, that he detected moral laxity hand in hand with controversial zest. Men were and are ready to champion a notion, a crotchet, indifferent to the exercise of practical godliness. This led him to estimate their connection with Christ. Connection with Christ implied more to John than controversial zest; viz., "Walking in the light," " cleansed from all sin by the blood of Christ," and Christian zest directed to the attainment of Divine purity "as He is pure."

1. This hope. Carlyle said, "Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope, this world is emphatically the place of hope." R. Baxter said, "Hope is the spring which sets all the wheels going." Hope, like some unseen omnipresence, governs this realm of men. The child just waking up into life, the aged waiting for the final summons. agriculturalist, despite precarious weather, toils on; the merchant,

The

Despite the dangers of
The soldier is led by it

despite that the price falls, buys again. the ocean, the marine enterprise thrives. into the hell of battle. The miser hopes to make his secret store bigger. The wheel of fortune is going to turn more favourably for the speculator. The country tramp hopes in the general gullibility. The felon in secrecy, then in human and heavenly mercy. The sick and dying hope for health and life. The suicide plunges out of life in hope. Who would pray or preach but for hope? These earthly hopes move to action corresponding; so does this. Let the emphasis lie in the word THIS hope. This hope in contradistinction to every other hope. It is stated in the preceding verse, “We shall be like Him." "We shall see Him as He is."

2. Each heart develops Heaven in an aspect most felicitous to itself. The life of Heaven is the opposite or the complement of the life of earth. Is life happy? Heaven is more so. Is life full of trial and grief? Heaven is its opposite.

‘They shall hunger no more" has peculiar attraction for those who on earth have known the pinching of poverty. Its rest is the charm to earth's weary ones. Its health to earth's frail sick ones. Its immortality is the great charm to those who have been most heavily bereaved. These revelations of Heaven are precious just as we feel life's friction.

Several things brought "Divine resemblance" into the forefront of John's Heaven. (1) The brightest and strongest of the saints see more flaws in themselves then outsiders see, and tremendously feel their own frailty. This patriarchal saint remembers the hole of the pit from whence he had been digged, remembered his narrowness, irritability, vindictiveness. Out of this remembrance had grown his present gentleness, &c. What struggles would he speak of could he tell us how he reached his perfection! Fully alive to this warped degenerate flesh, as he gave himself to the struggle again, he did so in this spirit of hope we shall be like Him." (2) As a chief of the Church he had seen many a weak one struggle, struggle to be true and pure. He had seen many a blunder. In the hearing of these frail, blundering, yet struggling brethren, he says, "We shall be like

Him." (3) The hydra-head of heresy and sin was lifted within the Church. It was an unhappy picture upon which he looked, but he looked upward and beyond, just a little, and saw a brighter picture. Himself and his brethren no longer made ignoble by sin's shadow, no longer tortured by its strength or shame, but radiant and holy, "like Him." This moral beauty it is which allures John. Not crowns, nor thrones, nor palms, nor songs, but spiritual resemblance to Christ.

3. Remember the platform from which he speaks. (1) That of age. Age is a thing to which we turn our gentler side. Human life out of commission, dismantled, is to us a sorrowful, pitiful thing, we do not always heed, but we feel the fascinations of its counsels. John was aged and infirm. Shorn of his strength, on the margin of the grave, earth vanishing to a point, the sense of his own mortality was deepened by death's havoc in the apostolic circle, but he is serene in the hope of life beyond. The taunting voice of the Sadducee was not hushed. Nations were dying "without a hope to cheer the tomb," but to him "death was swallowed up of life." I shall live. "We shall see Him," &c. (2) That of controversy. Men were then perplexed with the mystery of God, and were formulating their theories of His being and of His action. What blunders have they made? What caricatures of Divinity have they evolved? "It doth not appear," &c., implies a limit to our powers of knowing. John had seen many wonderful providences, His chosen destroyed, His Church assailed, His apostles devoured. He shrank from the distortions of the venturesome and from his own perplexed fancies. "We shall see Him as He is," not as we have guessed Him, not the one-sided, or many-sided Being of our mad efforts, &c. "As He is."

4. This is good cheer for earth's afflicted, who have ever been looking up to Him through a veil, through the encompassing cloud, "we shall see Him," &c.

5. Good cheer and stimulant for the Christian zest which, while grateful for all instrumentalities which lift Godward or bring God near, be it the voice of the sea, or chirp of sparrow, the daisy at our feet, or the bespangled heavens, the voice of the