personality we are only exaggerating our own qualities, and calling them the living Father, will have little weight upon minds that can apprehend the alternatives which they must necessarily choose. There is surely more in the idea of manhood, and all that it implies, to help us to a true conception of God than there is in the idea of "tendency," or "inscrutable reality," or the "incomprehensible power." By all means let us select terms that have the largest implications, and not allow ourselves to be the dupes of phrases that are empty of meaning. Human parentage is beyond all doubt a higher platform on which to stand and think of God, than any of the conclusions to which a materialistic science would conduct us, and from which all ideas of intelligence and heart are excluded. Hence the constant appeals which Divine teaching makes at once to our nature and relations.

When we have thought our way into the heart of the Saviour's representation of the Father, we are able to see how foolish it would be to draw the circle round any people, and confine the Divine paternity to them. He is not the Father of the Jews only, nor of the Gentiles only. He is not the Father of the good children, and not also of children who

choose to be bad. The Saviour's thought is wider than can be measured by the tape-line of any nationality or any church creed. The philosophers cannot claim Him as peculiarly their Father; nor can the rich men, nor the men of might, nor the men of culture, nor the men who walk with solemn air in temples. A man may not have said, "I believe in God, Father Almighty," but just because there is a man's heart in him he is that Father's child. He may be a bad child-that is his fault, his sin, his crime; but his nature and the Divine relation remain the same. Now, it is just here that the teachings of Jesus Christ show how strong they are to help the race. For He has something to work with, and something to work upon. There remains with man the possibility of the child-like response to the living Father's love. The simple assurance that the pulses that beat in him are fed from the "fountain of life" is enough to arrest the downward step, and cause the whole man to remount to God. And if with a single note or two the great Master can make music so rich, what melodies there will be when all the keys of a believing, loving, grateful soul are touched by all the fingers mercy wields! If men are to be lifted out of the "rank and steaming valleys of

sense," from which our modern moralists have no power to deliver; if thought and life are to escape the cramping influence of science and philosophy, out of which all spiritual power has been emptied; if the weak and weary, instead of being driven to the wall, are to be lifted up for ever, it must be by some aspect of the truth that is wrapped up in the representation which Jesus gives of the living Father. Everywhere man must be taught to think that in that living, loving heart there is room for him; and though he may not be a man of intellectual grasp, or of strong purpose, or of rich culture, or of wide and generous impulse, or of ambition that scorns difficulties, but only a wretched thing, down at the lowest depths, and of whom even the most hopeful might be tempted to give up hope, yet the Father who has given him life has given him also love, and waits to give them in all their higher forms more abundantly.

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CHAPTER III.

THE FATHER OF SPIRITS.

"I AM, I ought, I can, I will." Such is the way in which man, as the high-born child of the Father, is represented as being able to speak of himself. As Anselm expresses it, "The human spirit is a created image of the Divine Spirit; it can and ought to love God as the highest good.' It is the way of modern thought to speak of man as a being whose whence and whither no man knows. Among a class of writers who condescend to particulars, his origin is represented as being lowly enough. As they are not exactly agreed about his nature, they can scarcely avoid being at sea about his origin. With a subtlety and inconsistency quite startling, they speak of mental, moral, and spiritual things, while the reality of mind or spirit is with the stoutest dogmatism denied. The defence set up, that "no harm can accrue so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols," might be

innocent enough; but the reckless way in which all the terms used are made to conduct to a materialistic conclusion, only shows to what confusion all falsehood leads. For as Lange in his History of Materialism says, "It is one of the most important efforts of recent materialism to deduce the whole mass of voluntary movements from mechanical causes." The inconsistency in the idea of voluntary movements as the result of mechanical causes, is gulped down with an eagerness unsurpassed by the hungry beggar who swallows his morsel, wipes his mouth, and moves off. And hence it comes that, to use the language of Tyndall on another subject, "there is often a virulent contagion in a confident tone; and the hardihood of argumentative assertion is sure to influence minds swayed not by knowledge but by authority." It is not simply those who give themselves up to dissect a black beetle's nerves that become dogmatic in their denial of spirit as distinguished from body; but the contagion becomes catching among classes of men who are grateful for anything that relaxes the bonds of obligation and allows the reins to lie loose on the neck of wayward passion. For, if the distinction between mind and body is broken down, then movement will simply be mechani