people's sin, and by that suffering holiness touches all our hearts and leads us back to the Father.

But all this heroism that suffers for another's fault, which cannot be lost out of human hearts till we shall all cease to love or cease to sin, is inevitably (need I say it?) of a most hidden and secret character. There is ever great darkness and shadow around the true cross, however its symbol may glitter in the sunshine of public places; for this kind of vicarious and atoning goodness, more than any other, wholly loses its power when there enters into it any element of display. Such things belong to the unspeakable realities, which must act of their own immediate, spontaneous force, and not be admired or talked about.

The cross of Christ itself has lost much of its power over our feeling by having been for so long the centre of a sacred drama and part of a "scheme." Only when we can come freshly and with unprejudiced imaginations to the last scenes of Jesus' life, do we feel how natural and how genuinely affecting is the great fact that he, who was perfect man, could only manifest himself the Son of God through the baptism of suffering and death. But, oh, how mistaken we were, if we thought the hidden life of Jesus, or the life hid with Christ, was all gloom and agony! It is only selfish solitude that is miserable, only in the struggles God has not required that any one is unblessed and forlorn.

So wonderful is this hidden life of the best and strongest souls that, as we know it better, we reverse our judgment of what true happiness is, and what the true

success of life consists in. Of the sorrows of Christ we have the most affecting signs and symbols; but the joy of Christ, and the peace, though he assures us they are real, are as inexpressible and invisible as that breath he breathed upon his disciples when he bade them "receive the Holy Spirit.' And those who have followed him, indeed, and have received his spirit, "verily they have their reward."

Do you not know already that in your own lives the most joyful, the most vital and momentous issues are not such events as a biographer might gather, but those crises of conscience, the hours of illumination, inspiration, consecration, when you were lifted above your temptations, and set forward in some way of wider or more faithful service? These are the things "which the Father seeth in secret"; and in your judgment of yourself, in your judgment of others, it is this hidden life which you wish to estimate.

Your life is hid with Christ in God. What is noblest and best, what is most joyful, most divine, in a Christian life, attracts no crowd, wins no applause, is not enrolled and badged in any legion of honor which men can see.

These hidden places of faith, heroism, and forgiving love are like those silent altars where no songs are ever sung, but where we see the burning flame of a Divine Presence never withdrawn, and know that many whispered prayers go up to God.

They are such lonely and shadowy places as that in which the patriarch wrestled with the angel, would not let him go, and was made a Prince ever after; or

as that mountain of transfiguration from which the Christ came down, full of power and authority over all evil things.

Out of these tribulations, out of these joys, come forth the strong souls, in white garments of peace, who praise God, and do him such service as the world. can neither wholly hide nor wholly understand.

MY SHELL.

A

SHELL upon the sounding sands

Flashed in the sunshine, where it lay:

Its green disguise I tore; my hands

Bore the rich treasure-trove away.

Within, the chamber of the pearl
Blushed like the rose, like opal glowed;
And o'er its domes a cloudy swirl

Of mimic waves and rainbows flowed.

"Strangely," I said, "the artist-worm

Has made his palace-lair so bright! This jeweller, this draftsman firm,

Was born and died in eyeless night.

"Deep down in many-monstered caves
His miracle of beauty throve;
Far from all light, against strong waves,
A Castle Beautiful he wove.

"Take courage, Soul! Thy labor blind
The lifting tides may onward bear
To some glad shore, where thou shalt find
Light, and a Friend to say, 'How fair!""

THE DIVIDED LIFE.

"And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion; for we are many."- MARK v. 9.

THIS answer of the man of Gadara to Jesus is one of those vivid touches of nature, of which the Gospels are full.

The name "Legion" came from the hated language of the conqueror. It called up, perhaps, some hideous remembrance of the invading army, of homes de stroyed, vineyards ravaged, men murdered and women. carried away, as the terrible Roman eagles moved on through the Syrian villages. This Legion was a multitude, yet it was one. It spread itself abroad, always irresistible, always with its ranks of fierce faces, its solid lines of shields and spears, bringing consternation as it advanced, and filling the air with tumult and lamentation. What truer or more awful image could express to such a man's disordered imagination the power which had desolated his life, taken possession of the very citadel of his being, so that now his only thought, his only utterance, is the pitiful cry, "My name is Legion; for we are many."

This sense of a divided life is a kind of hallucination not uncommon. The records of every insane