TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY

AFTER TRINITY.

THE ETERNAL SAVIOUR. Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.-HEB. vii. 25.

HAPPILY we are not dependent on this or any other single passage of Scripture for our belief in the doctrine that Christ's power to save is practically unlimited. We are not certain that the word rendered "to the uttermost" has more than a temporal significance. Probably it has. But if the text does not positively affirm, it supports and suggests the truth, left beyond all doubt elsewhere, that the power of Christ to save

I. IS UNCONDITIONED BY THE CHARACTER OF THE CASE. However complicated or aggravated that may be, no fear or doubt need be entertained for a moment. Men may, and they sometimes do, think that their sin is unpardonable, or that their true manhood cannot be restored, that no human or Divine power can raise and renew them. But Scripture and experience alike prove that they are wrong. There is no depth of iniquity to which man can descend from which the power of Christ cannot lift him up. There are no crimes against heaven and earth which the mercy of God in Jesus Christ will not cover. He saves to the uttermost.

II. EXTENDS THROUGH THE WHOLE OF OUR HUMAN LIFE. We may have to change priests or pastors, and we may be troubled by the fact. We have not to change one Saviour for another. The thought is too familiar to affect us, but it is a very precious truth that all our life through we have to do with an unchanging Lord and Friend. It means, 1. That Christ is ours through all the successive periods of our life, each one of which has its own dangers and difficulties, and demands special grace and power. Of Him do we all receive " grace upon grace," one kindness after another, varying according to the stage we have reached and to the peculiar need of the passing hour (see John i. 16). 2. That in any great sorrow or emergency that may overtake us we are sure to have our Divine Friend to whom we can resort, and on whose sympathy and succour we can rely. 3. That in the great, continuous work of spiritual culture we may count on His help. We are in some serious danger of supposing that there are faults in our character and blemishes in

our behaviour which are irremovable, and must be accepted as an inevitable detraction from our worth and influence. But by what right do we accept these as permanent and incurable? With an ever-living Saviour, a helpful High Priest, "ever living to make intercession," able to save His people to the uttermost from all their sin and shortcoming, we ought to be striving for and expecting a full deliverance, a complete salvation, thorough sanctity of spirit and excellency of life. We have no leave to settle down into a complacent tolerance of any evil thing in temper or in spirit, in speech or in conduct.

III. WILL CONTINUE THROUGH ALL GENERATIONS. Many systems have had a brief day of power and have passed away. They have had adventitious or spasmodic advantages, and have done great things for a little while. Then testing time has come, and they have waned and disappeared. Jesus Christ has not lost one jot or tittle of His power to heal and save. Where His truth has been corrupted it has been enfeebled, as we can well understand it must be; but where it has been cleansed of its accretions and has been presented in its purity, it has proved the power of God unto salvation." This it is proving now. At home and abroad it is found to be the one sovereign power that transforms the base, that uplifts the degraded, that arouses the sluggish, that calls the worldly to the service of God, that makes the selfish to be concerned for the welfare of their kind, that comforts the sorrowful, that cheers the lonely, that gives peace in strife and hope in death. It shows no signs of age, no symptoms of decay. ready to supply its place.

There is nothing

Eighteen centuries of physical research and philosophic inquiry have not provided any substitute for Christian truth. It is Christ alone who can speak to us with authority upon God, upon sin, upon human life, upon the future; it is He alone that can give rest to heavy-laden souls. Christ is proving to be the Eternal Saviour to whom mankind in every age can turn with trustful and thankful heart. To whom, if not to Him, shall we go? He only has the words of eternal life on His lips, and the gift of eternal life in His hand.

Fatherhood as taught by Jesus Christ: 2. Confidently approach our Heavenly Father through His mediation; 3. Eagerly accept the grace of God unto eternal life for His sake.

TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER

TRINITY.

THE SACRIFICE OF THE LIPS. So will we render the calves of our lips. HOSEA xiv. 2. By " taking with us words," in speech or in sacred song, we can render to God the calves, i.e., the sacrifice, of our lips. The gift of speech is one that we sometimes speak of as distinguishing us from the animal creation; but its very commonness, and the constancy with which we use it, make us less sensible of it, and therefore less grateful for it than we should be. Not only with the tongue, but for it, should we "bless God" (James iii. 9). But it may be well first to remember that there is

I. THE SACRIFICE OF SILENCE. It is a great thing to know how to serve our Lord and our neighbour by keeping the lips closed. To withhold the biting sarcasın or the keen retort which would inflict on a human spirit a deep and rankling wound; to keep back the pleasantry which might amuse a company, but which might grieve God by its irreverence or its inconsiderateness; to restrain the reply which rises to the lips when provoked by stupidity, or carelessness, or ill-will; to refrain from repeated condemnation of children or servants, because we do much more harm than good by perpetual scolding; to be silent when we are tempted to speak, but when the closed mouth is wiser and kinder than the uttered word;-this is a true and acceptable "sacrifice of the lips."

II. THE SACRIFICE OF TRUTHFULNESS. We are bound to truthfulness by the express commandment of God and by the claims of our fellow-men (Eph. iv. 25). We render this sacrifice, not merely by refusing to stoop to downright, deliberate falsehood, but by avoiding the utterance which is fitted to convey a false impression; by avoiding the evil and pernicious habit of exaggeration and caricature-a habit very easily caught, but only with great difficulty conquered; by that strong, abiding, working conviction of the sacredness of truth which constrains our neighbours to feel that they can take and

trust our word absolutely. So do we "render the calves of our lips."

III. THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE. We can hardly conceive of Divine service without this element of praise; and this seems to our thought the best and truest Christian form of the sacrifice of the lips. To adore the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the majesty of God; to celebrate His faithfulness and truth; to bless Him for His bounty, and His patience, and His watchful love; to magnify the grace of our Lord Jesus. Christ in sacred song-how excellent is this! How certain it is that the Church will always be able to say, "Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion." Unitedly, intelligently, heartily, spiritually, should we render this most pleasant, most acceptable sacrifice.

IV. THE SACRIFICE OF PRAYER. It may indeed be truly said that it is not necessary that the lips should be opened in order that prayer be offered, that there is often the truest prayer where no sound is heard. Sacred history and our consciousness attest this. Yet the lips have a service to render and a sacrifice to offer here. By utterance of our thought we help ourselves to pray; for expression kindles, sustains, directs devotion. And by uttering our thought we help others to pray. When we enable other hearts to draw near to God, to give Him thanks, to ask for His help and blessing, to plead for the prosperity of the cause of Christ-then do we render to our brethren a very valuable service, and to Him, to our God, a true and acceptable sacrifice. It is a "gift" that should be cultivated, especially by the young, for its possession and exercise greatly enhance the usefulness of a Christian life.

V. THE SACRIFICE OF HUMILITY AND CONFESSION. Here we are very near the exact thought of the prophet. Hosea bids Israel to return in penitence to God, to "take words " of humble acknowledgment on its tongue, and so render the calves of the lips. One before him had said, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Humility is the gateway that opens into the kingdom of Christ (see Matt. v. 3). When with deep and true penitence of spirit we take with us words, words of Scripture, or those of the hymns we sing in service, or those which our Own hearts prompt us to use, and when we seek God's mercy in Jesus Christ, we then offer an

acceptable sacrifice, and "with the mouth confession is made into salvation."

VI. THE SACRIFICE OF HELPFULNESS. By the timely, thoughtful, helpful word, we may render service to man and sacrifice to God. 1. The word of warning. To him who is clearly moving down the slope at the end of which is wrong and ruin, to her who is evidently losing the faith and love she once had, we may address the admonitory word and seek to save from the evil which impends. 2. The word of comfort. To one who is in difficulty, or disappointment, or anxiety, or bereavement, or loneliness, we may speak the word which will bring a smile to the countenance, a light to the path, a hope to the heart. 3. The word of encouragement. To our neighbour whose mind is turning to the truth, whose soul is seeking God, we may utter the word of enlightenment and spiritual guidance which may help him to find the Saviour he is seeking, and the rest and joy which are to be found in Him. 4. The word of challenge. To those in the same house, school, class, or shop, we may go and say, Let us move forward together to religious decision, or to an open confession of Christ, or to some good work of Christian service, or to some greater generosity in His cause; let us unite to serve God and our neighbours as we have never done yet. Thus by timely and helpful words shall we "render the calves of our lips."

ADVENT SUNDAY.
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY.

Be sober.-1 PETER i. 13.

THIS injunction may refer inferentially to the practice of temperance as commonly understood, but its significance and scope are much deeper and wider than that. Writing of the surpassing excellence of that great salvation of which prophets had prophesied, into which angels desired to look, which had been really made known by the Spirit of God (ver. 12), Peter urges his readers to “gird up the loins of their mind," i.e., to call forth all their spiritual resources that they may understand and appreciate it; he then bids them "be sober," i.e., exercise in this great matter a sound judgment, command themselves, not be led to harmful extremes, or give way to illusions that would disappoint them, but maintain a manly, intelligent, healthful self-restraint. Doing this, they might "set their hope perfectly (to the fullest possible limit) on the grace that was being

brought unto them at the revelation of Jesus Christ," i.e., they might confidently expect the largest and richest blessings which the manifestation of the grace of Christ was fitted to bring with it. We may strive and we may look for the greatest good, the fullest prosperity in connection with the Gospel, but at the same time we must cherish and exercise spiritual sobriety.

I. IN THE ACCEPTANCE OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 1. The Church at Thessalonica had a strong hold on the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh," was its watchword, its prevailing thought. It had a right to anticipate the hour when there would be another manifestation of its Lord. But it fell into insobriety of thought and of conduct in this matter. Its members thought that as Jesus Christ might appear among them at any hour, they need not concern themselves with the ordinary duties of life, with provision for its bodily necessities, and they

began to be " disorderly." They had to be

rebuked by the Apostle Paul 2 Thess. iii.), and summoned to be sober in doctrine and in deed. 2. The Church at Corinth had an unusual share of "gifts," particularly of the "gift of tongues." The members of that Church had a perfect right to make the most of its possession. But they were bound to hold their special powers in subordination to the great ends of glorifying Christ and of edifying one another. This they did not do; they were not taking a sober view of the subject, and had to be corrected (1 Cor. xiv.). 3. It is a distinct Christian doctrine that we must be "separate" from the world; that while in it, we are not to be of it. But the hermits of the earlier time and the monks and nuns and the ascetics of a later and of the present time, fell into sad insobriety when they sought to retire altogether from the engagements and relationships of human life. Painful facts have superabundantly proved that we cannot decline what our Heavenly Father offers us without doing ourselves harm rather than good. One the other hand, proof abounds on every side that in accepting the joys and filling the spheres which open to us in the providence of God we may "walk holily, righteously, and blamelessly," and adorn the doctrine of our Saviour in all things. It is the sober view of separateness from the world which is the right, wise, Christian

error.

one. 4. That "we are justified by faith" is according to Scripture. By faith in Jesus Christ we have access to the grace of God; believing on Him we have eternal life. But when men say, as they have said, that when we have once believed and been restored to the favour of God we cannot forfeit His friendship by any folly, or even by any sin, they fall into the gravest spiritual insobriety; they push certain statements to an extreme, and they fall into dangerous, even destructive, 5. We are sanctified by the Spirit of God. When we have returned unto God and been received by Him, there remains much in us that has to be removed from us, there is much absent from us that has to be gained by us. We are not "complete in Him." The process of spiritual completion is the work of the Divine Spirit. But when it is maintained, as it has been, that if we only give our hearts to Him and invite His entrance and make entire surrender of ourselves, we may be instantaneously lifted up to the full height of holiness, then the mistake is made of not "being sober" in thought and in belief. Christian maturity is a growth; it is the gradual upbuilding of ourselves on our holy faith; it is the result of a strenuous struggle; it is the consummation of a wise and true Christian course; it is the blessed consequence of daily prayer, of the continual

reception into our minds of the thoughts of God, of much fellowship with Jesus Christ, of the wise use of all forms of Christian privilege, of active work in the field of sacred usefulness, of the lighter and also the severer discipline of the Lord of our life, of the wise Father of our spirit. That is the "sober" view, strongly substantiated by Scripture, constantly confirmed by the experience of the good.

II. IN THE REGULATION OF CHRISTIAN

LIFE.

III. IN THE NOURISHMENT OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. There is a kind of spiritual sustenance which is pleasant "to the flesh," but which is dangerous, if not delusive; it is that of perpetual religious excitement; the reading of those books and the hearing of those sermons which make an almost unbroken appeal to the imagination. This cannot be said to be taking milk (1 Cor. iii. 2), but drinking champagne. If we would build up a robust and fruitful Christian character we must eat the "strong meat" of Divine truth, which informs the mind, which enlarges the view, which braces the will, which sustains and strengthens the soul. There is much occasion here for attention to the Apostolic admonition-be sober.

WILLIAM CLARKSON, B.A.

PETER DELIVERED FROM PRISON.

ACTS xii. 5.

CHARACTER is revealed in its own light. It is self-interpreting. If you would appreciate the size of the United States, you take some State with which you are familiar, like Massachusetts, and lay it down again and again upon the map, and by your comparison correct your estimate. If you would know the preciousness of a jewel, you place it by the side of another more or less resplendent, that in this presence it may reveal itself. If you would know a man, you put him by the side of another man: his character is displayed in its strength or in its weakness by its opposition to or conformity with another character. You get a new impression of Abraham's

fidelity as you view it in the light of Lot's fickleness. It is by comparison that character reveals itself. We never tire of setting men

of different epochs, experiences, abilities, and temperaments over against each other that we may gain a truer conception of the character of each by comparison. Sherman, the general, and Porter, the admiral, are each revealed in the other's light. Lincoln is better known because of Washington. We shall know Peter better if at the outset we think of him and of Herod, who, at the time of our text, had such cruel designs upon his life.

Herod was born in a palace, was cradled in the lap of royalty, schooled in the diplomacy and sycophancy of a corrupt court, rose to

be himself a king over all Palestine with one unbridled ambition in his soul, namely, to please. What was a life like that of James or Peter if by its death he could win the approval of his courtiers?

Peter, on the other hand, was born in a fisherman's home, and enjoyed the comforts of a simple life. He struggled with the passion to please as he came to manhood.

I. We have for our first thought the manpleasing or God-pleasing type of life. Will you be Herod or Peter?

Jeremiah would not temper his prophetic utterances to meet the wishes of the fickle monarch, and with cords was let down into the dungeon in which there was no water, but mire.

Daniel would not close the window toward Jerusalem, and therefore was carried to the den of lions.

And so, almost indefinitely, illustrations might be multiplied of those whose pathway has led them through the prison in the pursuit of the determined purpose of their lives. Ask them, one and all, for their testimonyJoseph, Jeremiah, Daniel-"Have you found a worthy comfort, an adequate satisfaction, an abiding joy in your life pursuit?" and with one voice they will answer "Yes." Pleasing is not the supreme duty of life. One has no business to make himself obnoxious; pleasing has its part to play, but it is not a principal part. "Better, a thousand times better, be Peter in his prison than Herod in his palace. Better be a man without a country here and sure of a kingdom there, than in this life to get one's good things and to enter a pauper into the life beyond."

II. The second thing which impresses us in this narrative is the presence of unobserved power. What we see is not power, but the exhibition, the manifestation, the illustration of power. The thing itself is hidden in the invisible laboratories of God, where it is manufactured. One would have said that Herod had the power. He had the prison with its walls of cold, grey stone, and its gates of iron. He had the four quaternions of soldiers. He had the sentence of death signed and sealed. The apparent power was with Herod, but there was a stronger than the apparent power. A little company in the upper chamber all unknown, save possibly to Rhoda, hiding, perhaps in fear, from the cruelty of the pursuing Herod, are manipulating the levers of power against which the king and all the

strength of his kingdom are impotent. From the palace emanated proclamations, which by willing subjects were executed. From the prayer-meeting in the house of Mary there were petitions which the angel of the Lord was honoured in executing. The unobserved power of life is just as real as that which manifests itself. Until occasion call it forth, we little suspect its presence.

O Christian! the strongest power in the world is yours. Shorn, you may be, of earthly strength, there still abides within your reach a power which you can summon, which you can invoke to the fulfilment of the purposes of God.

III. The conquest of the impossible. Men bind shackles, station guards, lock doors, and proudly defy deliverance. God sends His angel, shackles are unloosed, guards discomfited, locks picked.

No man has a commission to despair if guarded by the angel of the Lord. In ways undreamed of, by methods unsuspected, that angel will work the works of God. Oh, for a living, glowing consciousness of God's ability to secure His own interests and to care for His own children! The conquest of the impossible is God's prerogative, for "with God all things are possible." It remains for us to notice :--

IV. Unrecognized answers to prayer. Is prayer a form? Do we look for the answer? If it comes, is it to us an assurance or an astonishment? The great surprise of many a Christian life to-day would be, I believe, the beholding of the prayers which had been granted, and, in the answering attire, were unrecognized.

Elijah wanted to know if his prayers were answered, and so after he had prayed ou Carmel he sent his servant to the highest spur to look toward the sea. "Nothing," said the servant. More prayer from Elijah. "Nothing," again replies the servant. Another petition from the prophet, and so on for seven times, and then a cloud out of the sea-small, the size of a man's hand-and then black heavens, clouds, wind, and a great rain. To pray is but half of the Christian privilege to watch for the answer is the other half.-(Nehemiah Boynton.)

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES. ACTS xiii. 1-13.

IN the past few years we have often been invited to read new books of history with very suggestive titles, such as "The Making of