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the divine life as well as in the written word. Carbon, perfectly polarized, builds itself up into the diamond. In silence, in the earth's central heat, the crystal is formed, a thing of permanency, of highest beauty. So we seek our polarity. Let no rude shocks of circumstance shake us out of our highest resolves.

Election, Salvation, are two links of a chain; the middle one is "laying hold." If we can read the characters of God's image on our souls we see that they are the counterparts of the golden characters of His love, in which our names are written in the Book of Life. Make your calling sure, then is your election known.

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In Scripture the Spirit is not spoken of as a property of the soul, but with a genitive following "spirit of meekness"; or with an adjective: Holy Spirit"; showing that the moral result is the only pledge and token of His presence. "All other consciousness is hypocrisy or fanatical delirium," says Leighton. And Coleridge, "the man makes the motive, not the motive the man."

What determines the man? The intelligent will. But what determines the will? Each seed

brings forth its own plant, and in every soul works the energy, without which it is dead. Love empowers, Word informs, Spirit actuates the will.

If any one is surprised that the Divine aid reaches deeper than our consciousness let him reflect that though we trace back to our utmost

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in the search for the originating impulse of our will, we can never find its first footmark.

Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, is irrefragable; but there is in man something beyond the intellectus-the soul, whose operations can neither be counted, coloured, nor delineated. Here Faith comes in; here Form is a sacramental thing, the sign of a significant truth, yea, even the highest "sign of the Son of Man.'

Lord, increase our Faith; our sense of the unseen, eternal realities of life. Thou dost forgive our sins; Thou dost seal us with Thy Holy Spirit; we come before Thee having the adoption of children; may this spirit of adoption pass into our life. May the eyes of our understanding be enlightened, that we may know the great riches of glory Thou hast in Thy saints; and so may all mean fleshly desires die in us, as we seek to enter into the blessed company of Thy saints, to be in very word and deed members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.

THE THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT Collect. O Lord Jesus Christ, who at Thy first com

ing didst send Thy messenger to prepare Thy way before Thee; grant that the messengers and stewards of Thy mysteries may likewise so prepare Thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at Thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in Thy sight, who livest and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Spirit ever, one God, world without end. AMEN. Epistle. 1 Cor. iv. 1. Gospel. St. Matt. xi. 2.

"Go ye into all the world" was our Lord's command, adding as in the commandments of the older dispensation, a promise, "Lo, I am with you alway." There is a great gain in the larger outlook on all nations as belonging to our Lord. The highest study of mankind is God; the highest truth yet revealed to man about God is the Man Christ Jesus. That this revelation should reach all nations is the burden of Isaiah's prophecy, in every symbol and historical parable.

As we enlarge our minds to these Advent contemplations our Christianity becomes no longer Puritanical or Broad or Medieval, but large, true, deep, and above all simple.

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The imperfect truths of men become degraded; so too has Christianity been degraded; but against its great elementary truths no degradation could come. Obscured by encrustations of superstition, narrow interpretation and extreme logic, still, through all heresies, despite persecutions unwise or cruel, and all fantastic excesses, the Truth of the Divine Man has prevailed.

Nor is there any better way for the Church to keep alive the simplicity, the reality and the curative power of our religion than by taking it to the far-off peoples. Small differences fall off before the large, embracing truth. Receive the enlargement that comes from studying the nations remote to you, and the lives of those who minister to them. When these are great as was St. Columba, St. Martin of Tours, St. Patrick, St. Boniface, their wonderful work is easily recognized; in our modern day Judson, Cary, Livingstone, Pattison, Selwyn, have left their mark on the century and the nations. Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He send forth labourers into His harvest.

In its personal application the study of the day speaks to us of our own preparation, made ready by God's ministers and stewards for that higher day when our Lord shall find us an acceptable people in His sight.

There may not come to us a great outward era when millennial changes will be ushered in; but we must all die, and be brought into our Lord's

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more immediate presence. St. Paul said "absent from the body, present with the Lord," in what way we know not, except in some way more like Him; "for it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

As we kneel before Thee, our heavenly Father, we would feel anew Thy peace about us. Thou hast brought us into the adoption of sons; lifted us out of disobedience into the wisdom of Thy just ones. May something of Thy glory be about us, so that all earth's tasks may be radiant with it, all service be made easy by it, all aims uplifted. May Thy words be heard evermore, that though the mountains depart and the hills be removed Thy kindness shall not depart, nor the Covenant of Thy Peace be removed. Our frailties remain-Thy help remains. May we realize daily that without Thee we are not able to please Thee. So be evermore a daily presence to us, not merely a name, a doctrine, but a power -Christ in us, the hope of glory. Then we will know that all things are ours, because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.