willed it, and we are what we are by His will. Each has a place in His mind and in His heart, and no one else can occupy that place. He is Creator, Master, King; but He is also Father, and in His Fatherhood there is infinite tenderness.

The knowledge of the Fatherhood of God is the sum of revelation. It was known at the beginning, and every successive revelation was but the restoration of the ancient truth that had been forgotten or obscured. Idolatry obscures it; sin obscures it; worldliness obscures it. We have need to remind ourselves of it every day and many times a day; and so the divine prayer begins, not "O my God," as we might have expected, but "Our Father." The antidote for sin, for worldliness, the antidote for the fashionable ungodliness of this and every age, is the daily cry, "Father." The wise and learned will be humbled by it into the childhood that Christ praises; the poor and small will be made great by it, remembering that so great a God is their Father; the sick at heart and weary will be cheered and sustained, trusting to the everlasting arms; the prodigal will be reminded of and recalled to his home.

The duties of each to God and man are summed up in that word "Father." A right view of God is the secret of a right life. Some think hard thoughts of God; some think too easily and familiarly of Him; many think scarcely at all of Him. God's own revelation of Himself by Jesus Christ bids us think of Him as our Father. No earthly

fatherhood evidently can fully represent to us the Fatherhood of God, but all the best characteristics of true human fatherhood are types and shadows of the Fatherhood of God.

Think of all the best fathers you know or have heard of, and you will learn something of what the Apostle says when he tells us to look up to heaven and say, "Father." A loving human father makes much of the little gifts and tendernesses of his children; he is content to give much and get little or nothing in return, for he knows how little the child has to give; he is ready to wait till age and ability enable his child to manifest his love; he makes much of little things; he makes allowances; he sees good even in the poor failures of beginners; he values the effort even where there is evidently no prospect of success; he makes sacrifices as a matter of course for his child; he rejoices in his mirth, and suffers in his pains and sorrows. And yet he can be strict: he can refuse repeated and even tear-bedewed requests, and he will not, for he cannot always, explain his reasons. He can punish too and seem cruel, while his loving heart is suffering more than his punished child. A mother's love is wonderful, but it is to a large extent instinctive, almost involuntary; she shares it with the lower animals. But a father's love is specially human; it is a reflection of the image of God, and bears marks and traces of divine beauty. But let us never forget that it can be but a very imperfect shadow and representation; all the tenderness of all the best fathers together cannot

even picture to us the tenderness of the Fatherhood of God. The finite cannot compass the infinite. What is the portrait of your father compared with the living father himself? Remember, too, that no one can be to you exactly what your own father is. Each soul must learn for itself to find a Father in God. God must reveal Himself separately to each soul. Love is not taught in school or by books;* it grows at home by daily communings, and when once it lives and works it will do what nothing else can do; it will draw prodigals home from the far country of their misery and ruin.

God's true children have received the Spirit, whereby they cry, "Father." Have you received it? God began the work for you and in you at your baptism; He took the first step. What steps have you taken to know your heavenly Father, whom to know is to love?

* "You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; just so you learn to love God by loving."-St. Francis de Sales.

CHAPTER III.

THE SALVATION OF THE SOUL.

"Now is the day of salvation."-2 CORINTHIANS vi. 2.
"Thou passest by-I will not let Thee go

Until Thy mercy streams into my soul;

I am sin-laden; lift the burden off,

For Thou alone canst heal and make me whole."

"Saviour, oh, come and save:

C. A. M. W.

Speak but the word, Thy servant shall be whole :
Turn, Lord, and look on me; quicken my soul

Out of this living grave."

And for that Blood of Thine, that cleansing Blood,

I come to Thee."

BONAR.

A HUNDRED years hence where shall I be? Dead, certainly; dead long ago; this body that is now so much to me will be nothing to me; it will have perished. Even my grave-stone will begin to show signs of age and neglect. I shall be "a dead man out of mind," passed away, done with, forgotten; no one will want me, miss me, think of me. The world will go on without me. How little, after all, is the world to me! how little am I to the world!

But where and what shall I be? I shall be a saved or a lost soul! saved without fear or danger of perdition, or lost without hope of salvation. The thought is awful; the bare possibility of hopeless perdition makes the blood run cold. And the thought ought to be dwelt upon sometimes. It is hard quite to grasp, but when once we have it fast it is almost omnipotent.

A gay and profligate young French nobleman, after a short absence, flew to see the lady he loved unlawfully; he bounded up the stairs, and burst joyously into her room. There was nothing there but an open coffin, and in it a hideous corpse! The lady had died of small-pox, every one had fled, and left the awful ruins of a lovely, sinful woman. The great thought entered that man's soul as he stood for a few moments upon that dreadful threshold, and it did its work; he turned and went slowly down those stairs, went straight away from home and friends and wealth, and the world knew him no more. A severe religious order received him;

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