regard the future as standing in vivid contrast with the present. Rather should we look upon the future life as the continuation and consummation of the present. What we are is the prophecy of what we shall become; what we have is the earnest of what we shall possess. Instead of disparaging the estate to which we have succeeded "in Christ Jesus," we should cherish the loftiest idea of it in our minds. The language of our Lord Himself and that of His Apostles authorize and indeed require us to do so : see John xiv. 17, 23, 26; xv. 14, 15, xvii. 21; 1 Cor. ii. 9; Eph. i. 3; Rev. i. 6. In the text the Apostle calls upon his converts in Galatia to rise to the height of their heritage in the Gospel of Christ; they were no longer slaves but sons, and they should act and live (as such. We consider then

I. THE SERVITUDE FROM WHICH CHRIST DELIVERS US. This is great and manifold. 1. That of error and of the evils which accompany it. The Galatians, "not knowing God, were in bondage to them which are no gods.' And to be enslaved by falsity of thought and by all the corrupt practices to which that mentally leads down is a bondage indeed; witness all the evil imaginations and abominations of idolatry in every age and in every land. 2. That of vice. We know well that "to whom we yield ourselves bondservants to obey, his servants (and in the case of sin, his slaves) we are whom we obey." Rom. vi. 16. There is no such abject and pitiable slave anywhere to be found as the victim of drunkenness, or impurity, or narcotism; he is "held in the cords of his sins." To escape from them is to be free indeed. 3. That of dread. There are those "who through fear of death are all their life subject to bondage." And it is not only the dread of death and of judgment which enslaves, but a servile fear of God, that shrinking of soul which makes men wish they could escape the eye and the hand of the Omnipresent. 4. That of literal obedience. The slave does those particular things which his master requires of him; he is fenced round by a number of prohibitions, and he is compelled to do precisely the definite duties, to rigorously obey the specific orders he has received from his superior. He breathes the atmosphere of constraint. He is surrounded on every hand by an iron law; very little is left to his spontaneous devotion, not

much to his personal intelligence. This was the condition of the Israelite under the law. The multitudinous commandments and prohibitions, with the consequent mechanical obedience, were a yoke they were not able to bear." This rested as a heavy burden on their heart and on their life. It was not spiritual freedom but bondage; it was not sonship but bond-service. These forms of Christianity in which all worship and all obedience are made subject to commandment and regulation, in which the question how and when and where God shall be served are all determined by a directory, are a pitiful return to the bondage from which Jesus Christ came to free us; they are a deliberate putting on again of the yoke from which He came to relieve us.

II. THE SERVICE OF SONSHIP TO WHICH HE CALLS US. We do not, as Christian men, shrink from the word "service"; nor do we desire to escape from the thing itself. Only it must be Christian service; it must be such service as we render in Christ and for Him. We understand the willingness, nay, the joy and pride with which Paul constantly wrote himself, "the servant of Jesus Christ." We can not only say, but sing,

"Oh; give me a diviner name;
Call me Thy servant, Lord!
Sweet title that delighteth me,
Rank earnestly implored;
Oh, what can reach the dignity

Of Thy true servants, Lord?"

But then it is not the service of cast-iron commandment on the one hand and of servile submission on the other. It is the utterance of a Heavenly Father's, of a Divine Saviour's, will on the one hand, and it is the eager elastic response of affection on the other. And the service of love is not servitude or slavery at all. It is sonship, with all which that includes. 1. It is being "at home" with God. For that privilege in all its fulness we await the hour of transition; but we anticipate it now. This is not to us "the enemy's country," it is rather a sanctuary filled with the presence of God, it is a home where our Father dwells, and where we are always with Him. 2. It is life animated by love, and therefore filled with freedom. The love which filial children have to their wise and kind father is the inspiration of duty, the motive-power of all obedience. And where love is there is liberty. There is no consciousness of constraint on the part of the

faithful husband, of the loving parent, of the dutiful son or daughter, as he or she labours or waits in all the services of the home: nor is there any sense of enforcement in him who is the "child of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (ch. iii. 26) as he seeks to please God in everything he is and does, as he strives to honour Christ and to cause Him to be magnified in the world. 3. It is the scene

and sphere of peace and joy. The home of the holy family is the place of abiding peace and of happiness which is not disturbed by the turmoil of outer life. In the hearts of the children of God is a peace which no

favouring circumstances can either impart or maintain; in their hearts is a joy which excels and outlasts the pleasures of time and sense, as the spiritual and the eternal excel the temporal and the transitory.

1. Suffer no false teachers, no specious representations, no sensuous inducements to lead you back from sonship into servitude. (ch. v. i.) 2. Realize and rejoice in the high estate to which Christ has raised you, and turn to good account the prerogative with which, in Him, you are invested.

WILLIAM CLARKSON.

PHILIP PREACHING AT SAMARIA.

ACTS viii. 5-25.

THE early Christians were not disposed to leave Jerusalem. They had been counselled to abide in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high; but Pentecost had come and gone and still they tarried. Perhaps they were in a measure constrained by their lingering prejudice against the gathering in of the Gentiles. The martyrdom of Stephen was the stirring up of the nest. The infatuated Jews who wrought that murderous deed may have fondly hoped that it would prove the death-blow of the little Christian Church. But God maketh the wrath of men to praise Him. Thus it is written, "The disciples that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." The Church perforce begins her aggressive march. Providence made them all missionaries. The Apostles alone remained in Jerusalem, which became henceforth "a centre not of concentration, but of radiation."

I. Philip, the evangelist, comes to Samaria. Among those who fled from Jerusalem at this juncture was Philip, one of the seven deacons. He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and power, and with a special fitness for evangelistic work. On reaching the city of Samaria he began at once to "preach Christ unto

them." In all the world there was probably, at that moment, no city whose conditions were more unfavourable to Christian effort. The people were half heathen at the best. Rejecting all of the Scriptures except the five books of Moses, they were addicted to all manner of superstitious observances. Just now they were under the spell of a certain necromancer, known to us as Simon Magus, who called himself "The Great Power of God." Under these circumstances a prudent evangelist might have thought best to pass on to more congenial soil. But Philip was not prudent in that wise. He followed the lead of Providence, the only safe plan. For "he that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap" (Eccles. xi. 4).

and philosophical disquisitions. No truth was presented which did not emanate from Christ as a sunbeam from the sun. The mission of a minister is to preach the Gospel; and the Gospel is the good tidings that Jesus saves. A hundred philosophers bending all their efforts for a hundred years upon a single sinner would fail to save him, but one faithful herald of the old-fashioned Gospel of the Cross can stir a whole city to its depths. Philip was only a deacon, an evangelist; there were many wiser men in Samaria; but, alas! the truth as it is in Jesus had not set their hearts on fire. So he had the advantage of them all. "And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which he spake."

2. And they were all the readier to listen to him by reason of the miracles which he wrought in the name of Jesus. "For unclean spirits came out of many that were possessed; and many taken with palsies and that were lame were healed; and there was great joy in that city." The very best evidence of the truth of Christ's Gospel is in its influence upon the community. Take a map of the world and mark off the countries where happiness and prosperity prevail in largest measure, and in every instance they are the countries that acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. The Gospel, wherever it goes, proves its divineness by working miracles of benefi

cence.

a subordinate place. Where the mind of Jesus prevails there is neither clash nor jealousy. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

IV. Simon the Magian is unmasked and put to shame. This Simon was the first heretic in the Christian Church, the first to claim its fellowship while out of sympathy with its fundamental truths. His mistakes were many and grievous.

1. He began with an unscrupulous ambition. No sooner had Peter and John begun to confer the gifts of spiritual power by the laying on of hands than Simon saw that his own juggleries were cast into the shade. All that he perceived were the outward phenomena; the inward grace did not occur to him.

2. He was guilty, thus, of utter insincerity. His pious airs and phrases, while he worshipped with the Christians, were all makebelieve. His heart was wholly unchanged; he was still an unregenerate sinner, in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity.

3. He was grievously mistaken as to the purchasing power of money. He thought that money could do anything. His mind was so utterly sordid that he was as honest as he could be in proffering coin for the sovereign gifts of God. There are men in our times who seem to have a like confidence in filthy

III. Peter and John come to his relief. No better could have been selected than these two whom we so often find in each other's company-Peter the Man of Rock, and John the Son of Thunder. We may imagine the delight with which the faithful, overworked evangelist welcomed them.

These Apostles came, moreover, not only to preach Christ to the Samaritans, but to confer upon the Christian workers the charismata, or gifts of the Holy Ghost.

On the arrival of these Apostles the work went forward with renewed energy, but Philip was less conspicuous. No doubt he recognized their superior fitness, and was content to take

Their very souls grow yellow as they bow before their wretched golden god. They subsidize all things to personal gain. Friendship, beneficence, patriotism, and piety are of value only, as they can be made to serve their selfish ends.

4. He was a blasphemer. He should have been appalled at the mere thought of tampering with the influence of the Divine Spirit; but "fools rush in where angels fear to tread." God was nothing to him, and sacred things were of value only to grind at his mill.

It is well that Peter and John had the courage to unmask this miserable impostor. There is no telling what harm he might have done otherwise in the early Church. As it is, he vanishes from our sight cringing under a terrific warning and whining for an intercession which, had it been offered, would have seemed to him only another of the Apostles' masterly conjurations. Farewell to him! And may no disciple of his ever again pollute the pure atmosphere of the Church of God !— (D. J. Burrell, D.D.)

PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN.

ACTS viti. 26-40.

YOUR attention is invited to the consideration of four important features in the lesson : I. God's Providential Direction in Individual Life. "And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip." This meeting of Philip and the Ethiopian was not the result of mere accident or chance. A species of pre-established harmony existed between these two souls before they were conscious of each other's existence in this world. An angel messenger gives the directions by which they were to be brought together.

Frequently we speak of accidents determining a man's destiny, forgetting that in the vocabulary of God there is no such word as chance. It seemed a mere chance that Moses was discovered by Pharaoh's daughter. "But Eternal choice that chance did guide."

A dusty pilgrim overtaken on a desert road by the chamberlain of a Pagan queen, that is all the world's wise ones see in this incident of our lesson; but in this chance meeting there is the hidden fire of a Divine purpose.

Behind all life's varying scenes-its joys, its sorrows, its social positions and its political ambitions, its individual cares, its national crises-there is the guiding hand of God.

What comfort to short-sighted, burdenbearing pilgrims, to think that God's angels are ministering spirits marshalled under King Jesus to guard and defend us against the assaults of our great adversary, the devil, who is continually striving for our destruction.

II. The Willing and Obedient Servant. Notice the nature of the directions given by the angel, and what was involved in obedience thereto. Verse 26 gives us the text of the angel's commission to Philip. In a sense Philip is to proceed under sealed orders. The directions are simple in terms as far as they go. Go to a certain road. Yet in a sense they are vague and indefinite. Sixty miles of desert highway, with the haughty, wicked city of Gaza at the southern terminus, was a command seriously requiring some more definite statements as to what duty was to be met, and where the field of future work was to be found. The angel had revealed to Philip just enough to indicate some of the difficulties in the way. To ordinary human nature such directions would make room for two or three questions of a very practical character just here. Natural,

indeed, would have been the questions, Why limit the sphere of my ministry by taking this unfrequented way? Here I am in the populous city, multitudes are being stirred with the Gospel message, converts coming every day. Because of this there is great joy in the city. Why, then, must I be sidetracked why leave the city appointment to take the country charge? That was the voice of expediency, and we will always find crouching somewhere in the near neighbourhood of that voice the cowardly tempter. And thus the tempter speaks: A long desert journey on foot, a lone pilgrim, prowling wild beasts, night coming on, and no shelter! Philip, there is danger ahead, "lions are in the way." Besides, if you reach Gaza, and it is revealed to you that there is your new field of work, consider what difficulties and dangers await you. Gaza is hardened in crime, bitter in its rebellion against God. It is one of the most ancient cities of the world. Joshua could not subdue it. It was assigned to Judah, but even that warlike tribe could not retain its possession. Yet to have yielded to his fears, to have doubted the Divine wisdom, would have been to have lost the opportunity of meeting the man for whose conversion Philip was the divinely appointed instrument: "Only the willing and obedient shall cat of the good of the land."

We have heard inspiring sermons on that word "Come" of the Gospel, and truly it is a blessed word, inviting weary hearts to the sweet asylum of rest found in Jesus Christ. But, as believers in the cross of Christ, have we realized the blessed privilege of that other great word of the Gospel, that small yet mighty word, "Go"? "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." "Go, work to-day in my vineyard."

It was the inspiration of that great word that moved Philip to obedience. We dare not leave this thought of loving obedience to the commands of God without emphasizing another fact in this connection, namely, that in proportion as we obey present revelations of God's will, future and fuller revelations will appear. Philip had plainly revealed to him the direction he was to take, "Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that. . . . is desert." This command was sufficient for prompt action at that hour. Philip had capital enough at that moment to go right to work for God in the new field. When the hour of opportunity came for other work than

walking a desert highway, verse 29 informs us that another revelation was given. Philip is on the journey, he is overtaken by the chariot of the Ethiopian ; "Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot." This higher revelation was given to Philip through obedience to the former revelation. God always furnishes revelations of duty in instalments according to the necessities of the hour and the measure of our faith. The way at first may seem dark. The commands of God may seem foolish to the demands of expediency. Human reason may stagger and fall and refuse to go farther. But to the eye of faith the "inventory of the universe is in heaven." He will reveal place and method when the hour of opportunity strikes.

III. A Bible-reading Traveller. How seldom do we see the Word of God in the hands of travellers to-day! If you want to be conspicuous and regarded as a little "cranky," take your Bible and read it on the railroad train.

This Bible-reading traveller offered Philip a better chance to preach the Gospel to him than the average hearer furnishes the preachers of to-day. He was prepared for the message. It is a significant statement in the lesson that Philip "opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus." The eunuch had come from a period of profound meditation on the Word of God to hear the Gospel sermon. Philip had not to contend with a hearer who had come from the perusal of the Sunday newspaper to hear the sermon. Many times have we heard the casual remarks dropped from the lips of the careless hearer as he retired from church: "The preacher did not strike me to-day." "He did not reach my need." "I don't think he prepared that sermon with his usual care." Dear friend, what about your preparation as a hearer by an hour's thought on the Word of God, or a few moments' earnest meditation on the interests of your soul before you heard that sermon? You come from the wild clamour of the stock-exchange; you come from the cankering cares of the business week; and expect the man in the pulpit to banish all this influence in the short hour of service, and feed you with the "bread of life," without one moment's preparation by earnest prayer or devout reading.

Again, this Bible-reading traveller had some difficulties in the way of his receiving

Jesus. He had his But he did not make

the truth as it is in doubts, as we all have. an idol of his doubts and set it up as an object of worship.

Almost in the same breath whereby the Ethiopian expressed his doubt he uttered the words of his confession of faith, "I believe that Jesus Christ" is the Son of God, and that moment the recording angel wrote his name in the Book of Life.

IV. The Rejoicing Christian. Our Bible story ends well. The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. Philip had been the instrument of converting the eunuch to Christ, not to the preacher. The soul that truly finds Christ does not backslide when the evangelist goes away, or when the minister changes his appointment. He is in possession of the Divine Comforter as Companion. The man has entered a life of trust whose elements are joy and peace in the Holy Ghost.-(E. M. Taylor.)

LORD'S SUPPER PROFANED.

1 COR. xi. 20-34,

"THE most sacred of Christian ordinances had been allowed to degenerate into a bacchanalian revel not easily to be distinguished from a Greek drinking party." Such was the evil condition against which St. Paul turned the indignant, yet singularly calm and moderate, protest of the verses before us. Let us seek for the special lessons which his words contain.

I. By class distinctions the Lord's table is profaned.

In the Church at Corinth there were divisions, strifes, heresies. It was uppermost in the minds of those who gathered at the table that others upon whom they looked belonged to one faction or another, and were rich or poor. The question of privilege was before all minds. Of such Christians gathering in such a spirit it was said, "When therefore ye assemble yourselves together, it is not possible to eat the Lord's supper." They had no intention to celebrate the Lord's supper. When they came to the table of the rich, they learned that not their riches but themselves were the objects of His interest. Life's distinctions should be left behind. In the spirit of perfect brotherhood men should