IN THE VISIBLE PURITY OF LIFE. 73

struck at once or it will never be given. Life is too short for most of us to construct elaborate ethical systems. Passion will not wait while the reason is satisfied, but rushes heedless to its objects. Temptation is so fierce that a swift and instantaneous rebound is all that will avail us. Everything depends on acting with unrelenting decision, unconpromising resoluteness and overwhelming energy, and I know of nothing that will produce these qualities like a strong and active faith in the living and righteous God, Himself absorbingly interested in and bound up with every righteous cause. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." Blessed are the pure in heart. They SEE God.

III. I have said Joseph differed from Jacob in that he had no Bethel visions, and from Abraham in not hearing the Divine Voice, but he had the Divine Facts of Life and in them he read the Ideas and Will of God. The oldest of all Bibles, the Bible of human experience was open before him, and he read, marked, learnt, and inwardly-digested its contents, and found it profitable for correction, for discipline, for reproof, and for instruction in righteousness, furnishing him with some real aid, for his good works.

It is a bad use of the written Bible which blinds us to the teaching of Home, hides from us the heavenly meanings of Marriage, and closes against us the libraries of National movement and History. Our Scripture, brief as it is, has this peerless excellence, that it sets all our institutions, the Church, State, City, hamlet, marriage, and family life all in God. They are divine; based on a divine plan, intended to achieve divine results. Every man's life is sacred, for there is a divine

74

OUR IMMEDIATE ENROLMENT

idea to be fulfilled in it-the idea of purity, and self-control, of sweetness and strength, of character and service. Underlying marriage there is a thought of God, and in all the offices of mutual love, in the reasons for forbearance and patience, in the occasions of suffering and sympathy, this life-union is tending to inspire self-supression, develop tender affection, nourish purity, and put ease and grace into our human life. Joseph, accordingly, read in his office of steward God's prohibition of impurity, saying, "How then; seeing the place I fill, the duty I am bound to discharge, and the confidence reposed in me, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God!" The seventh commandment was already written in letters of light in that home, and made more lurid by the dark spirit that dwelt in it. His very greatness was a dissuasive from evil, and he saw in the dignity of his position a protest against the slightest connivance at wrong. Girt about with these forces, his

"Strength was as the strength of ten

Because his heart was pure ;"

clad with zeal as a cloak and drawing motive from a present God, glorious in holiness; and every fact in his surroundings, becoming eloquent with divine teachings, he effected his conquest with the ease of a giant and the completeness of a king, so giving proof of that plenary power by which he finally won the name of Zaphnath-paaneah, or Saviour of the world, and became one of the types and prophecies of the coming Author and Finisher of our faith.

Oh, that men would consider the facts and institutions of life in the light of the divine ideas they reveal! that each man saw his double duty of personal purity and of protecting and upholding the threatened purity of the

IN THE ARMY OF PURITY NEEDED. 75

world; and all held the violation of chastity as great an offence as forging a cheque or robbing a till! The Bible of human experience is not closed; but illumined by the focussed light of all the ages, re-asserts the truth stated over and over and over again in our Old and New Testaments, that nations and states, families and individuals, who sow to the flesh do of the flesh reap corruption, the utter breakup and destruction of their life. Men and women are alike made in the image of God, put on the earth in equal numbers, redeemed by the same Sacrifice, renewed by the same Spirit, necessary and complementary to the development of the most pure and perfect life of each other; and it is an insult, an injustice, and a curse for any Legislature to provide and sanction a traffic so flagrantly opposed to the Divine Law as that which now discredits the British Statute Book. Let us cherish the noble ideal of a pure world and enrol ourselves in the army of social righteousness. This is the next great crusade. The struggle against intemperance has passed into a thoroughly-organized, consolidated, and wide-spread agency and cannot be put back. The struggle against impurity has only recently started and it calls aloud for workers Let us join it, in the faith and spirit of Joseph, and contribute our full strength to the sacred cause, inspired by a stern and relentless hate of evil, a hallowing reverence for the Captain of our Salvation, an unwavering faith that God and Purity are one, and a resolute chivalry in defending the weak, protecting the exposed, and saving the lost.*

* It is a ground of assured hopefulness that the movement initiated by Miss Ellice Hopkins is spreading over the world. See Christian Leader, January 29th, 1885.

"A

NY true reform must know the drift of the ages, and
work in the line of the eternal movements of the
Humanity is a unit; we must go up or down
SAVAGE.

Universe." together."

66

"Whenever the people have taken up the Bible, and allowed their minds to be thoroughly imbued with its teaching, they have come forth strong with the spirit of reform and equalization." Every Christian who understands and earnestly accepts the teaching of his Master, is at heart a Socialist."

EMILE DE LAVELEYE.-Socialism of To-Day, xvii., xix.

"This age, which has pursued happiness as our being's end and aim, now discovers that pessimism is the only thing that will wear. Just as the age which pursued (in Germany) beauty, ended by doubting its existence."

NEVINSON.-Life of Herder, 306-7.

Divine Socialism.

"JESUS WAS FAITHFUL TO HIM THAT APPOINTED HIM,

AS ALSO WAS MOSES IN ALL HIS HOUSE

HE THAT BUILT ALL THINGS IS GOD.
WAS FAITHFUL IN ALL HIS HOUSE AS A SERVANT,

MOSES

BUT CHRIST AS A SON OVER HIS HOUSE, WHOSE HOUSE ARE WE IF WE HOLD FAST OUR BOLDNESS AND THE GLORYING OF OUR HOPE FIRM UNTO THE END."Hebrews iii. 1—6.

(1) "He that built all things is God." But God is not the only builder. His sparrows that sit on the house-tops are already beginning to gather the materials for the family nest; and joyfully toiling bees have had the reward of their labour in the protection afforded them by their self-constructed and well-compacted hive. Man, God's child, like his Father, is always building. The instinct is strong in him, and build he must even if he has to pull down before he can get a start. He rears edifices