his conscience God's righteous law, in his heart the beginnings of a love like God's, he is thereby joined to the brotherhood of souls who share his faith. The life of each in God, and God in all,- that is what the Church of Christ signifies. Do you not feel how to each man's life this Christian faith gives that controlling purpose which makes for order and harmony, even in the most distracted soul? It makes a divided, aimless man responsive through and through to the touch of an Infinite Perfection. "Ye shall be called the children of the Highest."

In everything we do the alternative is offered between mere whim and self-will, and the divine, the perfect, the highest good. My humblest duty may be a witness of divine perfection, if only it be the best offering I can make. For every soul, at every instant, there is this choice between the upward effort for perfection, and the downward lapse to ease and self-pleasing. This perfection is not of your making or mine. Most often it is contrary to our desires, and higher than our imagination wholly grasps. It is the will of God, the pure truth shining in the mind, or, as Paul loved to say, "the righteousness of God," taking possession of ours.

Hence the difference between the pagan and the Christian mind: the former seeks perfection in the separate deed or creature, to perfect the individual self, to finish and refine. The Christian loves that perfection which is of God; i.e., the perfect union of man with man, of the human with the divine. The perfection of a Christian is like the excellence of glass, transparency to divine light.

Why does it belittle Jesus to call him a virtuous man? Because the virtue of Christ is not a separate and self-adorning virtue. The goodness of Christ is his affinity with all good. And so the Christian ideal is not the culture of the individual: it is to render every man a transmitter of the divine light and goodness which shines for all. "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Now, when this love of perfection seizes any soul, and when the soul sees that perfection is not in a part, but in the whole, this passion is called the love of God.

So it is that a life upon this Christ-like plane, dominated by one truth and one purpose, is pervaded by one controlling affection. It has the secret of inward joy.

Here, then, is remedy for the life that is "Legion." For there is nothing in our lives that may not unite. to the Divine Order, and the lives of our fellow-men. Broken though our lives may be, in themselves, we can join them, part by part, instant by instant, to the Divine Completeness which embraces us.

It is the way of Christ. himself. How varied was the Master's life,- now a carpenter; then a fisherman; a teacher; then lifted to be a people's hero, and a people's sacrifice! Now he was in the wilderness; then in the city; then wandering through the countryside. Yet what a unity was his life, every act, every word, receiving the mysterious seal of his personality!

This unity of life the intellect alone cannot

achieve it is from the heart, the will, the inner man. Just as the lily in the field, having life within, gets life from every wind of heaven, expands in sun and shower, attaining so the harmonious proportions God has given it; so a true man, inwardly responsive to all the powers of God, grows up into harmony and peace, into a unity which is not Man's achievement, but the Divine Law and Image shining through and overruling all the separated elements.

Man in himself is "Legion:" surrendered to the Divine Life, he is a centralized spirit. We say that personality moves the world. This is the kind of personality which does so. Large as you can, diversified as God permits, but a life harmonized because rooted and grounded in God.

Many lives with the richest endowments and opportunities are useless and impotent; for there is no power without unity, and a house divided against itself cannot stand. The victorious lives are not those of men who have the most various original gifts, but rather the lives in which the whole man is gathered together, body, mind, soul, and spirit, and quickened through with Life Divine.

THINE AND MINE.

I

LONG did roam afar from home,

My proud heart could not guide me, Till the King of Heaven sent down One to walk beside me.

No glory shone his way upon,

No monarch's crown adorned him: Love discerned her humble king,

Though the blind world scorned him.

To my dear King some gift to bring
I sought to buy or borrow:

"Give me, child, thy heart," said he,— I was filled with sorrow.

Again I heard his gracious word,

"A place for thee I'm keeping":

Dumbly, still, my fearful heart
Waited, doubting, weeping.

"Turn not away," he seemed to say,
And drew me gently near him :
Love like this I ne'er had known,——
Who could longer fear him?

His eyes divine looked love in mine,
His tears with mine were blended.

"O my king, I nothing bring :

Thine and mine are ended."

A REFUGE AND STRENGTH.

"God is our refuge and our strength.”—Ps. xlvi. 1.

THERE are two things a father can do for a child: he can protect him from danger, he can give him the necessary means of self-protection. Every wise father will do both. In many cases, he will respect the weakness of the child; and, while the storm howls by or the battle rages, he is content to keep the little one in shelter and in ignorance, as a mountain shepherd covers the lamb with his mantle, and carries him blinded along the edge of the precipice. But also there are many occasions when the wise father will not permit his children to remain passive and dependent under the stress of difficulty. He encourages them to action and strife. Less anxious to calm their fears than to urge them to self-defence, he permits them to see the full magnitude of their peril, and even exaggerates it. Both of these cases are parallelled in the dealings of the divine Father with ourselves.

In regard to many dangers by which we are surrounded, it is obvious that, owing to our weakness and ignorance, we can in no manner cope with them,