mines the course of the ship; not its rigging and cargo, nor the character of the crew, but its direction, the destination of the voyage, its final haven. Hence, when we see our craft steering away from God, we swing the rudder the other way and compel it to turn toward God.

Notice the rigging and the cargo. The former may be magnificent: excellent talent, superior mind, a rich state of grace. The latter may be very precious: a treasure of knowledge, of moral power, of consecrated love, of melting and adoring piety. And yet with that excellent rigging and that precious cargo, we can steer our craft away from God and aim at self. Then only is there self-denial when, without regard to rigging and lading, a man causes his craft to run directly to the glory of God.

The intention is everything. And it is this very intention which can so bitterly mislead us. That small wheel of our intentions is so exceedingly sensitive that a mere touch of the finger can reverse its action. This is why we are such ready believers in the goodness and beauty of our intentions.

Hence the need of deep, correct, intimate knowledge of self. And who possesses this? And since by His light the Holy Spirit constantly refines and chastens our self-knowledge, is it not perfectly natural that, while to-day we imagine ourselves to be quite advanced in self-denial, only next week we discover how bitterly mistaken we are?

To seek and look for one's highest good and eternal salvation, not in every creature, but in God; to use spiritual or material gifts not for ourselves, but for His glory; to esteem all perishable things of no account compared to the eternal; unwilling to be one's own lord, but as God's servant to enter His employ; no longer to possess any precious things, as money or treasure, or even one's children, as one's own, but to know oneself the appointed steward of the Lord; to have no more care or anxious thought, but renouncing every trust in man, in capital or fixed income, or in any other creature, to trust only and solely in the faithful God; to be at peace with one's lot and with God's will; and, finally, to direct all intentions and emotions away from oneself upon the Beloved and Glorious One,- is this not far-reaching? And can our own progress in regard to it ever satisfy us?

And yet such self-denial is required to render our works good works indeed, in which the angels can rejoice.

Thus the things which the Holy Spirit took from Christ to give unto us return to our Surety; for it is evident that not one of our good works can ever be complete in that sense. Our self-denial is never perfect. Hence the sad complaint that "our best works are ever polluted before God"; and the prayer for the cleansing even of our good works.

And this must be so; it has been divinely ordained that God's children shall never leave Christ. If they really obtained perfection they would lose sight of their Surety; but the fact that even their best effort is defiled drives them to Christ for the atonement and cleansing in His blood. Self-denial is a fruit of the atonement made perfect only by the atonement. And thus, in the growing and ripening of spiritual fruit, God uses our thoughts, words, and deeds as instruments of sanctification.

For does not the exercise of frequent self-denial and the subsequent yielding of the fruit of righteousness, under the Spirit's gracious operation, create holy habits in the soul? Is not in this way the natural bent of the heart transferred from Satan to God? And when the Holy Spirit makes these holy habits, this bent of the heart toward holiness, a permanent disposition, then we have become fellow workers with God in our own sanctification. Nor is it as tho He did one part and we another, but He using our work as a chisel in the sculpturing of our own soul.

And from this motive the faithful ministers of the Word should persuade, incite, and constrain believers to be always abounding in the work of the Lord. Sanctification must be preached as with the mouth of loudest trumpet. The Church of Christ imperatively needs it. The word which declares that God is a God who justifieth the ungodly may not be severed from that other word: "Be ye holy, for I am holy." The operations of the Word and of the Holy Spirit flow together. Therefore every young disciple of Christ should not only confess His name and live according to the desires of his heart, but flee from worldly lusts to walk holily and sincerely before the Lord.

Ministers of the Word should be careful not to conceal the majesty of the Lord Jehovah behind the cross of Christ. The responsibility must be fearful, if ever it should appear that our preaching of the cross of Christ, instead of having smothered sin, had quenched holy living.

Second Chapter.

LOVE.

XVII.

Natural Love.

"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."—Rom. v. 5.

SANCTIFICATION does not exhaust the work of the Holy Spirit.

It

Love,

is an extraordinary work, necessitated by man's fall into sin. of which we now will treat, is His deepest and most proper work, which He would have wrought even if sin had never been heard of; which He will continue after death; which He works now already in the angels, and which He will continue in us in the mansions of the Father's house evermore. Necessarily, across the path of quickening love falls the dark shadow of that terrible operation of judgment and hardening which the Holy Spirit works in the lost. We will close with a sketch of the unpardonable sin against the Holy

Ghost.

Our subject is not love in general, but Love. The difference is evident. Love signifies the only pure, true, divine Love; by love in general is understood every expression of kindness, attachment, mutual affection, and devotion wherein are seen reflections of the glory of Eternal Love.

Love in its general sense is also found in the world of animals; a love so strong sometimes that it shames man, casting reproach upon his conscience. The tenderness of the mother hen is proverbial. The same hen which at other times runs away at the distant approach of dog or cat, flies at the ugliest cat or fiercest bulldog when she has chickens to defend. Every mother bird defends her

eggs at the price of her life. And altho neither cat nor dog has the least consideration for the mother love of hen or duck, yet both manifest the same love for their young ones. The most bloodthirsty animals, even tigers and hyenas, are never more enraged than when the hunter approaches their whelps too closely. It is unnecessary to say that love in this sense has no moral value. Yet it is not valueless. Christ made the love of the mother hen a type of His own love for His people and for Jerusalem. And when our small boys are furious when they see the male rabbit kill his young while the female fights for them, there is in their boyish hearts a pure voice of praise for the superior love of that little mother. However, praise for this love which is merely instinctive, increated, and irresistible belongs, not to the mother hen or mother lion, but to Him who created it in them.

Turning from the love of instinct to the world of men, we are surprised to meet phenomena closely resembling it. A coquettish maiden, apparently devoid of all devotion, becomes a wife and mother, and suddenly she seems to have been initiated into the mysteries of love. Her infant is the only object of all her thoughts. She suffers for it without complaint, fondles and cherishes it; and if a cruel dog were to attack the babe, as a heroine the otherwise timid maiden would fight the monster.

And yet with all these similarities there is a difference. Love in that mother is weaker than in the animal. For hours she can leave her child in the care of others, while the brooding mother bird scarcely leaves the nest at all. The former has affection for other members of the family, but the latter with shrieks drives away all that dare approach the nest. In a word, the animal's maternal love is more absolute, and in this respect excels the love of the young mother. But when the chickens are half grown, the mother forgets and forsakes them; while the love of most mothers for their tender infants gradually assumes a nobler character, rising from instinctive love to spiritual love. A mother's power lies in the fact that she prays for her child.

Evidently we must distinguish here two kinds of love: a lower form which springs from the blood, which the mother has in common with the bird, but which is less constant; and a superior love of another sort lacking in the hen, by which the human far surpasses the animal.

This lower form is from the blood; not altogether instinctive as in the dove, yet nearly so, i.e., independent of the moral development of the mother. This can be seen in girls of inferior moral development, who, when they become mothers, fall almost desperately in love with their babes; while in others, who stand much higher morally, maternal love is much more moderate. And this shows that the irresistible passion of maternal love lacks a higher motive. Like the animal's love it springs from nature. And when we see and enjoy the spectacle, we realize that the glory of it belongs, not to the woman, but to Him whose work we admire in the inclinations of the creature.

Next to this instinctive love we find in the mother something superior; not only in the few, but in all. And we say this in spite of the fact that there are unnatural mothers who are almost entirely devoid of this higher love. Only, it should be remembered, that the human soul contains much that is suppressed which once was active; that in dehumanized women, when only partly reclaimed, this nobler feature often reappears; yea, that in the lives of such mothers, amid sin and shame, there are momentary sparks of a higher love which illumine their moral darkness like a flash of lightning.

This higher grade of maternal love bears an entirely different character. The sight of the sweet and lovely babe may support it, but can not account for it, nor produce it. It has a higher origin. Its sign is: a mother carrying her child to holy Baptism. For altho much of this is done out of custom and from love of display, yet essentially it is the declaration that a human child is greater than young bird or animal's whelp. Even when the French Revolution had temporarily abolished holy Baptism, it replaced it by a sort of political baptism. The young mother is constrained to see in her child something greater than mere "clods of infant flesh." And altho in many mothers it has become almost imperceptible, sunk so low that many have been seen to drag their children into the paths of sin; yet in nobler natures, and under more favorable circumstances, this refreshing parental love has the power to develop the energy of the moral growth of future generations. In understanding the difference between father and mother one will be able to distinguish this lower and higher mother love, even in their finer variations. Of course, the instinctive love is not so