known to us, and thus only at present. Let us never forget that the revelation of God was of a God suffering, God in human form, "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."

Think of man's imaginary gods, and measure their value by our wants. Think of the bright divinities of Greece, all youthful, beautiful, selfindulgent, as careless as they were ignorant of human woe; pleasant deities enough for youth and beauty and health, for bright sunny skies and peaceful Arcadian times; but what avail they for us, for our everyday life; for nineteenth-century miseries; for mankind at large, who are "born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"?† Or shall

"Patience is of two kinds, an active and a passive patience; the former is a masculine, the latter a feminine virtue. These two qualities are united in One only of woman born. His endurance of pain and grief is that of a woman rather than a man; not meeting them with the stern defiance of a man, but rather with the gentleness, love, trust, and shrinking of a woman."-F. W. Robertson.

"For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled

Far below them in the valleys; and the clouds are lightly curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming
world

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and
praying hands."

"The Unseen Universe."

"Greece gave men clear thought, sense of beauty, but Greece has not satisfied the religious longings of humanity."-Professor Shairp.

we turn to the ancient gods of power and cruelty, the gods of Assyria, or India, or Scandinavia? shall we find rest for our souls or hope for the great hereafter in such as they? Or shall we accept the last-invented God of man's imagination, the God unknown and unknowable, the author of inexorable forces and unalterable laws, whom no prayer reaches, who sits aloft and alone and cares not, while the laws He has set in motion crush and grind the quivering bodies and souls of the creatures whom He has allowed to be evolved out of nothingness? Is any of these the God we want? Is not the God whom we want the God who has been revealed to us?-a sympathizing God; a God who has become man and dwelt among us, and made personal proof of this world with its sadness and pain; a God who sacrificed Himself for us and died to save us? This is what we want; this is what all mankind has wanted and cried out for in all ages. *

And now He has come; Jesus, Son of Mary; poor as the poorest, suffering with the afflicted, lonely, dependent, ill-used, the victim of the

*"Pantheism, optimism, and above all unitarianism, do not recognize man's deep wound, and so do not touch his deeper woes and needs. Natural religion is like a caravan that will not stop when some sick traveller drops by the wayside to perish alone; but Christ delays His journey to minister oil and wine to him. Christianity knows nothing of the rude indifference, the careless prodigality of nature; it gathers the wrecked, the blighted; it even prefers the despised and abject.”—“ Colloquia Crucis."

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world's injustice and oppression, the companion of all who mourn. Yes, this is our God; the Christian's God; the God for all mankind in such a world as this.

And now that He has come and revealed Himself thus, what reception shall we give Him? We have seen how He once sat weary, hungry, thirsty, alone, by the well; but it was not then only; it was not only once. We read of His bungering after that; we read of weariness, pain, loneliness, after that. One of His last cries upon the cross was, "I thirst; " and then, too, "His disciples were gone away." What! has He come down from heaven to share human dependence and sorrow, to make Himself one with sufferers whose deliverance cannot come just yet, and will they esteem Him lightly and forsake Him? shall He see no fruit of the travail of His soul? He hungers and thirsts for love; He is wearied with ingratitude and selfishness; He finds the world no home for Him; He has not where to lay His head. Shall this be ? shall this be always, and by all? Has His great love taught no one to love Him?

Has it taught us? Is our heart open to Him, that He may always find a home and a welcome there, as in the cottage of Martha and Mary at Bethany; a place to refresh His hungry and thirsty loving heart in the midst of an unloving, selfish world? Is this what we say, "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof;

it is but a poor place, but I have prepared it as best I can; I have purged away all uncleanness ; it is empty, there is no one there, it is all Thine own; come to me, and be hungry and thirsty and lonely no more "?

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SOUL AND THE CARDINAL VIRTUES.

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."— PHILIPPIANS ii. 5.

"Our profession is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him.”—Baptism of Infants.

"The way to excel in any kind is to propose the brightest and most perfect example to our imitation. No man can write after too perfect and good a copy; and though he can never reach the perfection of it, yet he is like to learn more than by one less perfect."-TILLOTSON.

"Grant Thou this patience, O Jesus, to me!
Grant Thou Thy graces, my safeguard to be!
So that in all things Thy will may be mine,
Bearing all troubles, because they are Thine.
Still let me study like Thee to appear,
Still let me seek to be crucified here:
That if my anguish like Thine is increased,
I may sit also with Thee at Thy feast."

J. M. NEALE.

Ir is said that the book that has had the largest circulation of any of those written by man is the "Imitation of Christ." Most fitly its author is unknown. His aim was not his own fame, but to lead men on after Christ; like the Baptist, he