higher thinking and better living, and is more conscious of its duties and of its responsibilities. It is learning a new language, and is able to translate noblesse oblige. It is surprisingly stirred with an enthusiasm for personal service. That is because there are so many Christians in it. By and by when all the Christians are in society, and all the people in society are Christians of the right kind, we may begin to think of leaving out one of the petitions in the Lord's Prayer; for that kingdom of heaven for whose coming we pray will then be very close at hand.

ETHICS OF THE PARISH.

EVERY Christian ought to be a member of a parish. All good people ought to have a church which they may call their own, at which they attend service two times every Sunday, and with which they are thoroughly identified. Any other condition of living is quite abnormal. It is true that there are many Christians who are not recorded upon the communicant list of any parish. It is true, also, that there are many Christians who live apart from the pleasures and privileges of family life; some people live in hotels, some in lodging-houses, some in the street. Nevertheless, the ideal social life is lived in the family, and the ideal religious life is lived in that larger family which we call the parish. Every Christian ought to be in a parish.

Wherever a Christian is found who is not in a parish, something is probably the matter either with the parish or with the Christian. Sometimes the fault is in the parish. There

are parishes with inhospitable doors, so constructed as to admit only a few people of a certain kind. The front door is built so low that only the very short people can get in, or so exceeding narrow that only the thin people can squeeze in, or so high up in the wall that only the tallest people can climb over the threshold. That is, there are some churches which appear to be administered upon the principle of keeping out as many persons as is possible. None but the most rigidly orthodox, or the most devotedly ritualistic, or the most severely simple, or the most intellectual, or the most aristocratic, are desired. The church building is a club-house, meant only for those who are in social or theological agreement. It is managed upon partisan principles, and so contrived as to be uncomfortable for those who do not belong to the party. Whereas, the ideal church ought to be large enough to take in all the people ; and the parish priest should try, after the good example of St. Paul, to be all things to all men. Every Christian ought to be able to find at the parish church that which his soul needs. There ought to be room in the parish church for all honest people.

Sometimes, however, the fault is in the man. The Christian may not be a genuine Christian. He may be selfish, thinking of nobody save himself, and having no religious aspiration except to get what good he can for his own soul. If he can get that by himself, without the church, so much the better. He has no interest in any Christian plans which would set people at work together for the betterment of their neighbors. Or the Christian may be ashamed or afraid. He may be living a life which he rightly recognizes as inconsistent with his Christian profession; he does not dare to go into the parish. In either of which cases the Christian needs to be converted before he deserves the name of Christian.

Or the Christian may be ignorant - ignorant of Christianity. Many people have curiously mistaken ideas about religion. They imagine that they have departed from Christianity, when they have but departed from some sort of ritual which is in use among some of their Christian neighbors, or from some metaphysical statement which some people declare to be an essential Christian doctrine. But, in truth, no good man or woman has ever rejected Christianity from the beginning even to this present. There are

many who have turned away from some caricature of Christ, from some representation of him which is no more like the blessed Christ of Galilee than the glass Christ of a chancel window. He only turns away from Christ who calls darkness light, and light darkness. He who really forsakes Christ, forsakes God and goodness. Whoever even desires to know the truth about God, or even desires to live the life which God would have him live, though he be far away in the midst of doubt and sin, having but his face turned toward the light, there is a place for him in a Christian parish.

My concern, however, at present is not so much with the Christian who is not in a parish, as with the Christian who is in a parish already. What shall the Christian in the parish do?

The Christian in the parish will take his share in the parish worship and in the parish work.

It will not do to preach many sermons about the duty of church attendance. Such teaching endangers the real purpose of Christianity. It would be a great mistake for any one to think that going to church is an act which of itself is of supreme religious consequence. In the New Testament, with but one possible exception,