ties than to face up to the serious tasks of culture. Men miss culture of mind because they are idle, because busybodiness is easier really. And men miss culture of soul because they are too idle to make use of the means. You have to give yourself to prayer and meditation before the rebellious heart is curbed. You have to submit to discipline before the will is conformed to God's will and the life is clothed with the garment of holiness. The retort is often legitimate-Ye are idle, ye are idle, therefore ye say, We have no time and no inclination to go and do sacrifice to the Lord.

And this is the argument for the true use of the Sunday. Need I develope this argument also? It is the slave-driver's philosophy and the slave-driver's interest to make Sunday as every other day, to call it idleness, and to seek if they could to lash men back to their burdens. "Why do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? Get you to your burdens!" If we are wise we will not be misled by sneers about Sabbatarianism, and will resist every encroachment against the sacredness from work of the Sabbath. It is not enough to make it a day of cessation from toil. It is a unique opportunity for the true refreshment of the whole man, for worship, for thought, for communion with God

and with His people. You are living a mutilated life if you are living for the present, impoverishing your soul by neglecting the means of grace. Guard jealously your Sunday: use it jealously, to get the true good from it, to make you a better and a stronger man, and fitter for your daily work. It was the oppressor of men's bodies and souls who said, "Ye are idle, ye are idle, therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord."

The point of all our thought, illustrating it by the function of the Church, by prayer, by the true use of the Sabbath, is that there is needed for us all a centre of rest, a Sanctuary of the soul. I would dictate to none where he should find it; so that he find it and is brought near to God through it. Emerson asked a young woman working in his household if she had been to church that day. She answered brusquely, "No, I don't trouble the Church much." He said quietly, "Then you have somewhere a little chapel of your own "-a courteous assumption which might have made her think. Choose your own Church, by all means, but be sure it is a Church. I do not plead for the institutions which we call churches, unless there you get the Sanctuary which your soul needs. But don't tell me, with the cant of the time, that your Church is the solitary wood

or the quiet chamber, if you never worship there.

You don't trouble the Church much. Very well. Then you have somewhere in your life, somewhere in your burdened, sinful, stricken heart a little chapel of your own, a Sanctuary of the soul where you meet with God, where you bring your thoughts and desires and affections and ambitions and hopes, and submit them to God, some place where you are idle from the world's business and pleasures, and do sacrifice to the Lord. If you know the meaning of the Sanctuary, it is the strength and the glory of life, and saves you from the sordidness of the world and from the strife of tongues.

XVII

DISCOURAGED YOUTH: A SERMON TO

PARENTS

Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.-COLOSSIANS iii. 21.

IN passages like this Paul shows how the Christian faith accepts the fact of the different relations in which we find ourselves, and deals its impartial justice all round. The precepts are simple. They are to be obeyed not as strict rules, but as expressing the spirit of the religion we profess. They begin with the obligation resting on Christians as members of families. It is only with one aspect of that with which we are concerned at present, but we understand the Christian method better if we notice how Paul treats it as a whole. The family life of the time was most corrupt, and Christianity purified it not by revolutionary methods but by instilling into it the pure spirit of love. We are all placed in definite relations, as husband and wife, children and parents, brothers and sisters, masters and servants. There are some relationships over which we have no control, and

others we can to some extent control; but in either case we cannot escape the responsibilities. Every new position carries a new responsibility with it. There should be no light-headedness in entering into a new relationship, such as marriage, and there should be no shirking the obligations resting on us in any present relationship. The one is folly; the other is crime. Wives, husbands; fathers, children; servants, masters are all enjoined to act according to their place and function in their respective spheres ; but not singly. The one corresponds to the other, and both together make up the whole. Every duty is connected with a right; and every right brings with it a corresponding duty. We have all our rights, whether we get them or not—the wife as against the husband, the child as against the parent, the servant as against the master. We have all our duties, whether we do them or not; and our duties correspond exactly with our rights. The duties of men and women in the relationships of life are mutual, not one-sided but balanced on either side.

Notice how Paul groups them together, showing first the one side, and then the reverse side. Is the wife to submit to the husband? Then the husband is to love the wife. Are children to obey parents? Then parents must not provoke and discourage the