son of God. When he has sung of the stars, it is only as a son of God could sing of them. When he has dipped into the future far as human eyes could see, it is only as a son of God could take in the coming gloom or glory. But all this power and greatness of nature only renders more dark and degrading the conduct that refuses to render love and reverence to God as Father, and makes this question cut with a keen edge into the very heart of human character. It only renders the cup, large though it be, and bitter as are the elements it contains, which man has to drink, a just and wise retribution. For, when the heart has become unfilial, unfriendly, and unfit in every way for reciprocating affection, there is nothing for it but to be eaten up of its own unhealthy and unholy feeling. Such, we may be sure, must be the case wherever a created moral being refuses the love and obedience due to the Father. Refined sensibilities can have little sympathy with anything that offers insult to infinite love. Wise thought has no shield to defend such conduct, and hence the Father's complaint will find an echo in the heart of every dutiful child.

Meantime, however, the Father's question is meant to recall even unfilial children to a

sense of the wrong they are doing, of the disorder they are creating, of the sorrow they are causing, and of the distance that daily increases between His heart and theirs. The ruins of a heart, great and gloomy as they are, are not things which the Father can look upon as we do upon some historic castle or temple which force has dismantled and time defaced. It were sad enough if it only meant the ruin of some choice bit of workmanship maliciously brought about by wills that oppose what He delights in; but it is unspeakably worse when it is the ruin of His child, the child of His love, the child that resembles Him, but who by his own choice works this wrong. It is not possible that infinite love can view unmoved a single case of such ruin. And yet what battlefields and rocking thrones, and seething cities, and homes that are little else than four square walls, within which no love reigns, He has to look upon! Were it not that there are so many logical contradictions bound up in it, one might almost sympathise with the notion that the Father chooses not to look at these things, and therefore has no feeling about them. Sternly refusing to submit to the spell of mere fancy, however, we can understand with what

feeling the words are spoken, "Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, 'My Father?""

In our little earthly homes no child may designedly strike a blow at the peace of the family. Within so charmed a circle the loyalty of love is demanded all round. The "gladsome looks of household love," as Mrs. Hemans sings, must not be clouded by any unkind, discourteous deed or word. We set forth, in many aspects, by song and story, the beauty of that home where love is the presiding genius. Sad is the family history of which love is not the keynote. It is designed that, as from a fountain, streams of parental love should flow down into the young hearts that can only live by love. But it is equally designed that these streams should, in some way, remount in answering love to the parent's heart. It is so love's circle is completed. How beautiful it is to hear Kant, the great philosopher, saying, "I shall never forget my mother, for she planted and nourished in me the first germ of the good; she opened my heart to the impressions of nature, she awakened and expanded my conceptions, and her teachings have had a lasting and salutary influence upon my life." His father taught him truthfulness, and his mother taught him holiness and love, M

But God, in a high sense, is both father and mother to us, pouring light upon our thoughts and love into our feelings, and blessedness into every aspect of our life. Shall we not then be responsive to all this Fatherly dealing with us? To increase the discords that are already so very abundant in the human family by encouraging, through example, disobedience and disloyalty, is a sad return for such unutterable love. Why should not men behave like God's children? Why should they not open their ears and turn their faces to Him? Without being materialists in their creed, they say to a stock, "Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth; for they have turned their back unto me and not their face; but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us." The runaway children are always a sore grief to the parent. Nothing can be sadder than for an earthly father to strike his son's name out of the will; but how must the heavenly Father feel when He must needs let the "runagate continue in scarceness," and ultimately blot from His book the name of a man who might have been a happy child in the happy home for ever. It is then, in mingling tones of love and sorrow, He says, "If, then, I be a Father, where is mine honour?"

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CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUSION.

A LEADING statesman has said that " progress is disturbance." There is much truth, we imagine, gathered up into the condensed saying. You cannot make a highway through a forest, or a railway through a city, without disturbance. You cannot erect a hall of justice or a house of God without disturbance. You cannot carry any great measure of truth and righteousness through any legislative assembly without a great amount of disturbance. Displacement is necessary and unavoidable, alike amid material and mental things, when any new step of progress is taken. As in social and political affairs, so in questions that concern philosophy and religion. Ideas are revolutionary. Thoughts become the ruling forces. New orders of things shape themselves as new thoughts find expression, or old and forgotten thoughts are revived.

More than anything else has the assertion