useless men and women, sleeping through life, roused to work and energy and joyous usefulness; drowsy souls that pray not, praise not, do not grow nor shine, nor warm others, awakened and recalled to life and name and fame. You think you can do nothing, be nothing higher, better than you are. It is not so; it is sleep not death that hampers you. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

But there is yet another thought. These sleeping souls will die, if let alone. They cannot help themselves. Some, like the poor afflicted woman, are diseased and know it, and try many physicians, and at last, in spite of weakness and shame and pain, stagger after Christ and touch Him and are healed, almost stealing His mercy-highway robbers, "taking the kingdom of heaven by force." But some like the daughter of Jairus lie stricken and helpless, and it needs that some loving friend go to the Master and pray His help. So must Christians pray for impenitent sinners, for those who pray not for themselves, for those at the point of death, death spiritual and eternal. When all else fails there remains the prayer of faith, and that prayer will often move the Hand that lifts up the dying or dead soul, that touches the bier that is even bearing away the ruin of a man to its grave of destruction, and stops the awful procession.

See the weeping, loving Jairus bowed at the feet of Jesus in an agony of supplication; see him impatiently haunting His steps, even grudging His

mercy in stopping to speak to the woman who touches Him by the way; and see a pattern of the pitiful companion of the true servants of Christ, who pray for the souls that are too far gone to pray for themselves; who pray for dead Churches, for a sinful world, saying of what seems dead, "His life is in him;" hoping against hope, hoping in Christ, in whose presence death is nothing but sleep.

All through the winter, as we look upon trees and gardens, there seems all-pervading, all-conquering death; and yet we know it is not so. Nature is not dead, but sleepeth; there is coming spring, and with it life and brightness, and growth and beauty. We look out into the world and the Church; we look upon men and women; above all, we look within, and there seems nothing but death and dying. Let us look up; let us look to Christ our hope; in Him death becomes sleep, and the grave resurrection; for "in Him is life, and the life is the light of men."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SOUL'S USE OF CHURCH FESTIVALS AND

SEASONS.

"Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither."-2 KINGS iv. 9, 10.

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"Life is the soul's nursery."-THACKERAY.

"Though God has not tied Himself to ordinances, yet He has tied us to the use of them."-BISHOP WILSON.

"Many a leading light has stood over where the Young Child was, as it were, beckoning to us with a brightness in which, modest as it was, we felt there was something heavenly; and yet we have turned away, and have clean forgotten it."-FABER.

"The outward manna fell not at all on the Sabbath; the spiritual manna falls double on the Lord's day, and if we gather it not then, we famish."-BISHOP HALL.

As this or that Christian festival comes round, we often exclaim, "What, again so soon! How quickly time passes, and the years slip away! how much has happened since this time last year, and yet it does not seem long ago!"

So some of us say to ourselves—to ourselves, for probably our spoken words are different. We all lead more or less a double life; the one external, of words and acts and relations to persons and things around us; the other the inmost life of our own soul, which is often quite another thing; which is with every one more or less distinct from the external relative life, and is not unfrequently utterly unknown, unsuspected by others, for "the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and the stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy."

Just as we know nothing of the life of people at this moment in far-distant regions of the earth; just as the daily thoughts, the joys and sorrows, of the long-buried dead are a sealed book to us; so the faces we know so well are to a great extent but masks that hide the real man. Some are worse; many, let us hope, are better than they seem; but all are more or less different from what they seem. And years, as they pass over us, make us look with new thoughts upon old and familiar things. Children live in the present or the future, but the older look back more, and compare the present with the past.

It is not merely the passing away of life, the loss of friends and dearer ones, the changes that come and surprise us till we almost cease to be surprised at any change there is very much that is merely human in all this, and festivals should raise us to something higher. These festivals and anniversaries are multiplying upon us; their memory is

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accumulating. How many have we kept? We look back, and our life seems to be dotted thickly with them; they seem to be "passing by us continually.' Passing by us continually!" That is what struck that Shunammite, as Elisha so often came and went; and she saw that he was a man of God whom it was good to entertain, who brought with him an atmosphere that was purer than that of earth, who was more than friend, whose presence and words affected the inmost soul mysteriously, and sweetly raised it upwards to God. And so she yearned for more of his company; she grudged that he should ever pass by her door; she would make him a home in her home, that he might never pass that way without turning in and tarrying and bringing a blessing with him.

Let us, then, do with our Christian festivals as this woman did with Elisha's visits: they come and go of necessity, but let us make the most of them; let them not merely pass by, but enter in and tarry with us. The parallel is not far to seek. Elisha's name means "God the Saviour." It is the visits of God the Saviour that we commemorate at festivals. Elisha was but Elijah's servant, no great man; and our Lord took upon Him the form of a servant. Elisha would not come unasked, and we know how our Lord at Emmaus would have passed by, if He had not been constrained by pressing invitation to abide. The Shunammite knew that Elisha would not have luxurious lodgings, and so she made but plainest