belongs to reserve, to distinctiveness of love, to the mystery which comes from depth of nature and infinity of thought.

Therefore remember, that Christ has sanctified what is good in that quality we call reserve. Do not be too anxious to give away yourself, to wear your heart upon your sleeve. It is not only unwise, it is wrong to make your secret soul common property. For you bring the delicate things of the heart into contempt by exposing them to those who cannot understand them. If you throw pearls before swine, they will turn again and rend you.

Nor, again, should you claim too much openness, as a duty due to you, from your child, your friend, your wife, or your husband. Much of the charm of life is ruined by exacting demands of confidence. Respect the natural modesty of the soul; its more delicate flowers of feeling close their petals when they are touched too rudely. Wait with curious love-with eager interest --for the time when, all being harmonious, the revelation will come of its own accord, undemanded. The expectation has its charm, for as long as life has something to learn, life is interesting; as long as a friend has something to give, friendship is delightful. Those who wish to destroy all mystery in those they love, to have everything revealed, are unconsciously killing their own happiness. It is much to be with those who have many things to say to us which we cannot bear now. It is much to live with those who sometimes speak to us in parables-if we love them. Love needs some indefiniteness in order to keep its charm. Respect,

which saves love from the familiarity which degrades it, is kept vivid when we feel that there is a mystery in those we love which comes of depth of character.

Remember that in violating your own reserve, or that of another, you destroy that sensitiveness of character which makes so much of the beauty of character; and beauty of character is not so common as not to make it a cruel thing to spoil it.

Again, it is pleasant to think that Christ sanctified distinctiveness in friendship and love. No character can be beautiful, though it may be excellent, which can give the same amount of affection to all alike. It argues a want of delicacy, and, worse still, a want of individuality in the character, which at once negative its beauty. There are some who think that they should strive to bestow equal love on all, and who, on religicus grounds, avoid particular friendships. It was not Christ's way, and it ends badly. They only succeed in spoiling their power of loving and power of sympathy. These are gained and strengthened by strongly felt and special love for a few. If you want to give love and sympathy to all, have profound love for particular persons; for you cannot gain the power of loving otherwise than in a natural manner, and it is unnatural to love all alike. But love, easily going forth to those whom you find it easy to love, learns to grow deep and to double its power-and then spreads abroad like a stream which is most impetuous at its fountains. Christ did not love the world less, but more, because He had peculiar personal affections, and it is to that distinctiveness of love we turn when we would realise the

beauty of his love as distinguished from the majesty of his love. We are astonished when we think of the universality of his tenderness-but we have little comfort from it. Our soul longs for some personal contact with Him. Then it is that the speciality of his love for some comes home to us, and we know that He can give us a distinct sympathy fitted for our character. His love is universal, for all the race; it is particular, to each one of the race. Majesty of character meets in this with beauty of character.

Finally, encourage in yourselves the sensibilities of

life. No man is born quite without the power of receiving impressions from nature, and from human nature, though there are many who have brought death by neglect upon their native power. To encourage these sensibilities is not to fall into sentimental indulgence of feeling, for you can only encourage and increase them by active exercise of imagination and intellect; by active expression of them in the support and comfort of men. It is those who take no real pains with their sensibilities, who fall into mere sentiment.

Open your heart to receive the teaching of nature; not too passively, lest you lose your individuality, but letting all your powers freely play upon the lessons she brings to you; nor yet assuming too much activity of intellect upon what you receive from her, lest you lose the humility of receptiveness.

Open your heart to receive the teaching which comes to you from human nature. Feeling received and feeling given back will educate you into a strange likeness to Christ. You will learn, like Christ, to find your

religion in human life.

Listen lowly to the simple common word which is very nigh to us; for in the common details, accidents, affections of life—in the common relations of man to man, and of man to animals-in daily joys, and daily sorrows, that word speaks of the love of God to us, and of our childlike love to Him. But, both nature and man speak to us now, as Jesus spoke, in parables. He who has lost his sensitiveness cannot understand these parables.

THE BEAUTY OF CHRIST'S CHARACTER.

'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty.'-Isaiah xxxiii. 17. THERE are human lives which are poems, as there are lives which are prose. Some have the stately epic character, and we watch the course of their purification through the events of a nation's birth, or the growth of a religious idea. Others are the centre of so much of the doing and suffering of men, and move towards their fate with so deep an influence on the development of others, that we may well compare them to the evolution of a drama. Others stand for the most part alone, in a musical unity of life, complete in themselves, and lovely with noble feeling. These are the lyrical souls in the world.

There are other analogies, but let these suffice. They are the beautiful lives, lives which we may call artist work. Each has its own distinct charm; they give pleasure as poetry gives it, by the expression of the beautiful. Such a life, at its very highest range, was the life of Christ. We seek its poetry to-day, and we weave our thoughts of it round that profound phrase of Milton's, that poetry must be simple, sensuous, and passionate.'

Now if our comparison be true, the beautiful cha