THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE
EPIPHANY

Collect. Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth; mercifully hear the supplications of Thy people, and grant us Thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Epistle. Rom. xii. 6.

Gospel. St. John ii. 1.

We come to the culmination of these three weeks since Christmas in the Sunday of peace, when all life's water is made wine, and we meet the blessed assurance that the last will be best. There was an old idea that wine improved in quality from being repeatedly carried "over the line." So it is that the tossings, the tempests, the journeyings in experience enrich the wine of life which God gives in His bounty, our best stimulus and joy.

He who governs all things in heaven and earth has put an intimate correspondence between the outer life and the inner beauty. The order, the manifold variety of our dwelling place of earth tells me of the Land that is afar off, where the King in His beauty dwells; and my heart leaps up at the hints of such largeness there to all who have filled up the measure appointed here-faithful in little, ruler over much.

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How could I enjoy the hope of these great and precious promises did I not remember the merciful Love that looks on my feeble intermittent efforts, while I am faithful in desire and endeavour, and accepts them in the Beloved?

What is the Peace of God? It is to enter into the eternal Now, where we commune with Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

There is the eternal youth of the spirit, obscured often to the perceptions by the dullness of the flesh, yet seen and known by the soul within this earthly house of our tabernacle. Youth-yes -gladness, eyes bright with health and joy, while the life within, united to the Divine, grows and glows, inspired by the ever widening revelation of God within us. There, rooted and grounded, we grow to the character pictured in the Epistle, perfect human sanity, abundant life.

Blessed Jesus, whom have we in heaven but Thee? There is none on earth we desire in comparison of Thee. Thou wast acquainted with grief, and yet Thou didst leave us Thy joy, Thou didst give us Thy peace. Help us to welcome the toils, the deprivations, the sufferings, the sorrows Thou dost appoint us, and glorify the cross Thou dost lay upon us. Redeeming the time may we fill every waking hour with faithful duty, well ordered service, and find it the sacrifice Thou hast provided.

Strip us, O Lord, of every proud thought.

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Fill us with patient tenderness for others, ever ready to help, quick to forgive. In each hour of our daily life may we seek to be obedient to the heavenly vision, and so have a constant sense of divine realities behind the changes of time, and the delusions of sense.

So abiding in the sanctuary of Thy love we may be fitted for the duties of the day, and be given the victory that overcometh the world.

THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE

EPIPHANY

Collect. Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth Thy right hand to help and defend us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Epistle. Rom. xii. 16.

Gospel. St. Matt. viii. 1.

This Sunday presents to our view the Great Physician. It makes us see how He stands yearning to heal the soul, by the tenderness with which He heals the body. "I will, be thou clean.' We are so dull, so hard of heart, so addicted to the sight of bodily eyes! The faith of the old Roman needed not the Master's bodily presence, but would have His power reach over the intervening space. This faith was above that of Israel.

Yea, truly. They shall come from the East and from the West, and the children of the kingdom shall be cast out. How few of us are truly in "the Faith"! The body is the vehicle to the soul of the Faith symbol; but the soul must receive. And to receive help "in all our infirmities and necessities" we must know what they are. The Laodicean Church knew not that

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she was poor and naked and blind. When she recognized her need she would listen to counsel to buy food and clothing. The leper knew wherein his health lay, and he knew that divine power to help existed-"If Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean." Giving ourselves up to the ultimate Power, this is Faith; in accepting, in enduring, in going forward.

The excellency of the power is in Christ. May we so feel it, more and more, studying His divine life until we become changed to the same image. As trouble comes, and the dying of the Lord is borne again in our body, may His life become the more manifest; till we cry out with His servant of old, "O Lord, by these things men live, in them is the life of the spirit."

Merciful and gracious Father, suffer not the god of this world to blind our minds to the glorious Gospel of Christ, the image of God. May we evermore seek to see it-this Image of God,-who made us to be conformed to His likeness in the face of Jesus Christ. May the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory become a Vision to us, as it is the realized possession of Thy saints, who look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are eternal.

This inner sense of the Eternal Years-for this we pray; that life may gain by it purpose, fixedness, resolve. Under all the chances and changes