story is that in this higher kind of giving we have the type of what all gifts should be. Give because you overflow. In all your ministries to human need let this largeness of soul be felt. The poor ye have always with you; and, O my friends, none feel so quickly as the poor and suffering do, the vast difference between your sorrowful pity of them and your lifegiving abundant love, the love which does not stoop as to one below it, but feels itself glad and honored as one who serves the King. Have you never said, in some weakness or poverty of your own: “I do not want another's pity, making me ashamed. Come to me, my strong brother, as my equal and my friend. Let me know, by the largeness and freedom of your goodness to me, that you see in me not this poor creature who needs you, but the Christ in me, the nobler self in me, which you honor as it struggles to light"? If you have felt this claim in your own heart, let it be the interpretation of what that love is which you owe to others,- the love which is the overflowing of your life; the love which honors itself, and goes forth on the errand of mercy, as if to meet the King.

Does some one say: "I fail of this abundance of life. Mine cannot be the overflowing heart. I know the hardness, but not the joy, of my Master's service"? But are you sure? Have you not in all your nature one gift and quality that has this overflowing power? What possible life of our frail nature can be abundant all round? Can you not find, like Mary in that humble home in Bethany, some one

treasure you may spare? Begin where you can. Follow that one line in your life where your heart reaches out gladly to the larger good. In that one line, in that one poor treasure which you spend in an enthusiastic affection, you will find the secret of life, and so go on from more to more.

And so, finally, I would draw from this golden story these three helps in the conflicting claims of duty:

Strive for the higher quality of life, as contrasted with mere outward effectiveness. Seek those things which are constructive, which make your life a consistent whole. And, finally, cultivate your best enthusiasms. Learn "how to abound," until all your service both of God and man shall be—what some of it is now, not a painful struggle, but overflowing song.

THY BROTHER.

HEN thy heart, with joy o'erflowing,

WHEN

Sings a thankful prayer,

In thy joy, O let thy Brother

With thee share!

When the harvest sheaves ingathered
Fill thy barns with store,

To thy God, and to thy Brother
Give the more!

If thy soul, with power uplifted,
Yearn for glorious deed,

Give thy strength to serve thy Brother
In his need!

Hast thou borne a secret sorrow

In thy lonely breast?

Take to thee thy sorrowing Brother

For a guest!

Share with him thy bread of blessing,

Sorrow's burden share!

When thy heart enfolds a Brother,

God is there.

LOT'S WIFE.

"Remember Lot's wife."- LUKE xvii. 32.

THROUGH Storm and fire the family of Lot were being led forth by the hand of God from the burning cities of the plain. Lot's wife turned to look back, and became a pillar of salt, an object still pointed. out to travellers on the shores of the Dead Sea. It is one of those delightful legends that are found among the folk-lore of all nations. The fable is characteristic of the race from which it sprung. For the fathers of the Hebrew people were the wandering tribes of the desert. Their temple was the enlargement of a tent and camp, and in the East a pilgrimage is to this day a favorite expression of piety.

The legends of the patriarchal age of Abraham, of Lot, of Jacob, of Esau, kept alive in the minds of people the memory of their ancient migrations. These legends had also a moral significance. The great migration of Israel had been in times of spiritual illumination and prophetic power. Abraham and Moses, Jeremiah, the prophets of the captivity, and the sons of the Maccabees were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." The religion of the people was in its essence not local. They were sons of Abraham

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before they were citizens of Zion. The prophets who most fully expressed their national ideas had always said, “Though Jerusalem perish, though the mountains of Israel shall be desolate, yet none the less God is the shepherd of his people." In the religious poetry of the nation the figures of movement and progress, of flight and desert-journeyings, are com

mon ones.

The spiritual Israel always worshipped, like Father Jacob "leaning on the top of his staff," ever ready to resume its march, pausing, but not arrested, in its onward course. Once a year the whole nation, staff in hand and with loins girded as for a journey, eat the hasty paschal meal, which solemnly consecrated the whole "peculiar people" as the holy wanderers of history.

In the light of these conceptions we are ready to see Christ's intent in this brief warning against the mysterious sin of Lot's wife, a sin of which one element is recorded, that she "looked back." It was as if he had said: “A time of change and destruction is near: much that you hold dear and sacred is about to perish. Such changes have often come before, in our fathers' times. Remember that the true servant of God will set his face forward. They who cling to the old, will be unable to escape from the wrath that is to come."

This warning was needed. Jesus rightly interpreted the signs of the times, for a spiritual as well as a political crisis was at hand. They who would attach themselves to his cause must be held back by