compassionate what God compassionates. He pities the widow and the orphan; do you? If you are truly religious, if you are a doer of the word, this is the word to which you are joyfully conforming your life-"a Father of the fatherless and a Judge of the widow is God in His holy habitation."

Wrong

of the apostle's words

It may be well in a word to vindicate the distinction between the substance of religion and this necessary manifestation of it in visiting the poor and needy, and for this reason; this text has been used as exhibiting a sufficiently exhaustive account of what religion is in its essence, whereas it is simply one test out of many by which essential religion is to be tested. interpretation Back of everything in the form of outcome of religion, a man says, I am a doer of the word, not a hearer only; I am religious. The Apostle replies, You are religious! You have faith! You have been begotten by the word of truth! The engrafted word is saving your soul! It is a vast profession, it is a solemn avowal! What if you should be mistaken? How important you should have an infallible test? Here is one, I declare it to you by the word of the Lord, it is the spirit of all Scripture, it is the mind of Christ, it commends itself to every compassionate heart: Does your religion send you out again and again from the comforts of your own home to brighten homes where no comfort is; to speak a word to him who is weary? "Hereby do we know that we love Him if we love the brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" and what of the reality or worth of his profession, “I am a doer of the word "?

The substance of religion had already been set forth by James in Faith and the New Birth; he is now but applying a particular test of it, and it is utterly wrong to speak of the test as if it were the substance. Let a man, any man, try to live the pure and undefiled religion here demanded, without those heavenly aids, without the infusion of that new life which is bestowed in Christ Jesus by His Spirit, and it will soon appear how vain and empty his religion will become.

1. The Apostle says visit, not send only! Send by all means when you cannot go yourself, but make sure that you visit, that Visit. through your human presence you may bring to the sufferer the sense of the presence of the Divine. "How soon a smile of God can change the world!" Your words, your look, the pressure of the hand may be God's smile. Is it not well worth your visiting?

Visit all.

2. "Visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction": the poor and the lonely ones? Yes, perhaps most so; but do not the sufferers who are not poor and lonely need comfort too? The Apostle's words are general, and our observing of them must be as general.

3. "Visit, and keep yourselves unspotted from the world." Visit, and Visit and keep: not the one without the other: and keep pure. both rooted in Faith and the New Birth.

GLASGOW.

PETER RUTHERFORD.

THE TIDE OF SUCCESS.

"The tide is flowing up the great estuary, the boats are lying high and dry. At last a few ripples touch their keels. They begin to rock and sway, and at last, just as the tide is at the full, they are lifted free of the pebbles upon which they have been lying, and the men who are ready step in and sail out. If the man is not ready the tide drops, and the boat is left stranded, and the voyage cannot be accomplished. I hear the great incoming tide. I hear the rolling from the ocean of a Divine fulness of grace. Your keels are being kissed by these waters of Divine The boats are rising, are you ready to man them."

mercy and power. Dr. Bevan.

ROLLING AWAY STONES.

"Over the universal grave of the darkened soul there lies to-day the stone of Ignorance, of Prejudice, of Superstition. He hath put into your hands the lever that can lift the mighty incubus, and that lever is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, He renews His call, 'Roll away the stone.'"-Rev. Jackson Wray.

Germs of Thought.

The Transfiguring Vision.

"BUT WE ALL, WITH OPEN FACE, BEHOLDING AS IN A GLASS THE GLORY OF THE LORD, ARE CHANGED INTO THE SAME IMAGE FROM GLORY TO GLORY, EVEN AS BY THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD." -2 Corinthians iii. 18.

THE main drift of the context is to illustrate the frank openness and unreserve of the Christian ministry, as distinguished from the veiled, hidden, mystic character of the Jewish dispensation. The veil which once hid the shining face of Moses has now been transferred to the hearts of the Jewish people. They see no beauty in our Christ, no glory, because of the thick folds of prejudice, passion, and unbelief through which they gaze.

In sharp antithesis to this, we all-not a select few-but all, apostles and individual believers, with unveiled face, no longer needing veils of concealment to shroud the holy mysteries from view, "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed," &c.

I. THE MIRRORED GLORY. Adopting the rendering of the American revisers, "beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord," as the preferable one, on account of the implied contrast between the "hindered vision" of the fifteenth verse and the 'unhindered, unobstructed vision" here, observe that the Gospel is likened to a burnished mirror in which we behold the "glory of the Lord."

Glory is the effulgence of light; the manifested perfection of moral character. When Moses prayed, "I beseech Thee, shew me Thy glory," the answer of God was, "I will make all My goodness pass before thee." As if God had said, "My goodness, My tenderness, My pitifulness is My glory."

In the Gospel we have an exhibition of the blended righteousness and compassion of God; so it is called "the Gospel of the glory of

the blessed God." And since these attributes shine with softened splendour in Christ, it is called the "Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." For it is in the Incarnate God, our Brother, that we behold the "glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

Looking into the fourfold glass of the Gospel, to behold the "glory of the Lord," what do we see? A Divine Being, sharing the essential glory, emptying Himself of it, and assuming the garb of human flesh. First seen as a little child, folded in the arms, cherished in the bosom of a human mother. But unlike other babes, showing as He grows, no bias to evil, no tincture of sin; without blemish. Arrived at man's estate, His moral character has attained a symmetry, beauty, perfection transcending all ever seen, before or since. "He goes about doing good." Diseases flee at His touch. He weeps with them that weep, and rejoices with the glad. The timid, the sick, the poor, the outcast find in Him a protector and a friend. His is a goodness which attracts, not repels; draws hearts, as flowers are drawn towards the sun. All the duties of benevolence to man, of devotion to God He exemplified. "Cold mountains and the midnight air, witnessed the fervour of His prayer." The breath of calumny never dimmed the pure mirror of His life. At last, nailed to the tree of shame,-made "a curse for us,the force of self-sacrificing love could go no further. All other glories die eclipsed by reason of this "glory which excelleth." His is a glory, a perfection, not "faultily faultless," but eminently human and essentially Divine. In Him the unconscious prophecies of heathendom, sighing for a deliverer, are realised; the promises of a Messiah are fulfilled; the yearnings of the human heart for Divine sympathy are satisfied. He honours law, magnifies righteousness, expresses love. He atones God and man, harmonizes justice and mercy, heaven and earth. His birth, condescension; His life, goodness; His teaching, truth; His suffering, atonement; His death and resurrection, our pledge of victory; His session at God's right hand, the breakwater against the world's sin, the cause of the Church's progress; His second coming, the hope of every believing heart. What a constellation

of glory! And we may all behold it. Like the famous fresco in the ceiling of the cathedral, which was brought within easy reach by reflecting mirrors on the floor. We could not all be contemporaries of the living Jesus. If we had been, we might have had our spiritual perceptions blunted, veiled, like the Jews. But now, in the fourfold biography, we may all at our leisure behold the glory of the Lord.

II-THE TRANSFIGURING VISION. By beholding we are changed. In the very act of looking we are "metamorphosed." The same Greek word used to describe the transfiguration of Christ. We also are transfigured as we gaze. Mind and character become luminous. Beauty born of that communion doth sometimes pass into the face, as we have seen the very countenance of the ripe saint apparelled in celestial light.

Some gaze and are not changed. They have never so felt the evil of sin, the "plague of their own hearts," as to put the whole soul into a look. Their's is only a surface-a transient splendour. Like the face of Moses,-when God's glory smote him on the face, the skin of his face shone; but it soon faded away. And he put the veil on his face every time he came out of the tabernacle, in order that the people might not see how brief and evanescent the splendour was. It was an emblem of the transiency of his economy. So multitudes of hearers have their minds filled with Christian truth, their thoughts saturated with Biblical ideas, but they do not gaze so long, so fixedly, so lovingly, as to experience the interior and radical transformation.

Others gaze and are changed. Their hearts sensitive to the touch of truth, like the plate in the camera, to the pencil of the sun. Flinging away obscuring veils, and fixing the steadfast gaze on Jesus, they are transfigured. They share the excellence which they behold, reflect the glory they see, shine in the beauty which has won their hearts.

This change is moral; by the well-known law of our inner life, according to which we came to resemble what we love. Love to the Lord Jesus makes us like Him: and our likeness is in proportion to the intensity of our gaze. Newton said that he differed from other men only in the power of attention. What