to prepare you for the things that must shortly come to pass. Oh, I charge you, make God your strength more than ever! Feed upon His Word more than ever; live by faith, live by prayer more than ever; and concern yourself with His cause and with His kingdom in the only ways that now are left to you. The more the outward activities are limited, let your life be more intense, and full, and abundant in your own soul; in faith and in prayer, for yourself and others.

"It is a favourite speculation of mine," says Dr. Chalmers, that, if spared to sixty, we then enter on the seventh decade of human life, and that this, if possible, should be turned into the Sabbath of our earthly pilgrimage. It should be spent Sabbatically-as if on the shores of an eternal world, or in the outer courts, as it were, of the temple that is above, the tabernacle that is in heaven."

Soon thy feet shall stand within the city of the Blessed One, thy tears all past, thy joy for ever sure. Therefore, in these last miles of the journey let your whole soul be filled with brightest hope and loftiest expectation. You have lived long and seen much, and all of it should tend to this. You have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread; but you have seen it, again and again, well with the righteous. You have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree; but while you looked the crash came. Of a sudden God's axe was laid to the root of the wicked, and he passed away, and his memory began to rot in your own life-time. have seen the hand of the Lord in all your wilderness journey now for perhaps seventy years; and now, at last,

You

shall you turn from God in peevishness and querulousness? It cannot be. Your light from this day forward shall shine more brightly and more instructively than ever. You will bring forth fruit in old age, the special fruit of old age— calmness, patience, brightness, cheerfulness, unfailing and unfaltering trust in your Redeemer, God, and in every word of promise He has spoken.

And no matter, if that be so, what special trials old age may yet bring—and it may bring many trials. You may be neglected by your own flesh and blood. A poor old woman came to my door the other day-poor old body, drifted about, like a cork on a stream, from one married daughter to another. And one can easily see the meaning of such treatment. It is how most cheaply to get rid of the mother in whose womb they lay, and at whose breast they drew their nourishment. Well, that may come. It has come to the godly. That sort of trial, and other trials, may come while we are here. We may expect tribulation to the very end; but the deeper the darkness, the brighter the light of God's presence.

Remember all that He has done. Remember all the love of His heart, and never allow yourselves to think that this can be the end. These fading eyes, and closing ears, and palsied hands, and opening graves, and increasing poverty, and friendlessness-can this be the end of all the wonderful providences that God has showed to you? Is that to be the end? It cannot be. Did God lavish upon you such wisdom, and power, and love, and is this to be the end-to grow weaker, and dimmer, and duller, and at length to

mingle with the clods-defeated and disappointed? That cannot be. The worm, surely, shall not outlive the manthe man of our text.

Thy days are only in the beginning. Thy Maker and Redeemer has been working for eternity, through all these years of thine earthly sojourn.

"Earth changes; but thy soul and God stand sure;
What entered into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: potter and clay endure."

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

BREAD TO THE FULL.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD, BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

MARK vi., from the 35th verse.

FEEDING five thousand. As this narrative is set down here, and still more when read in the light of those other portions of Scripture where the same event is recorded, we are made to feel that the Lord purposely, on this occasion, put his disciples into a difficulty. He Himself was in no difficulty; although from their tone, when they came to Him, they almost implied that not only were they in a difficulty, but that He also had been placed in a crisis for which He had no ready relief.

Now, it is very helpful to plunge into the middle of things at once, to notice (and you will read the narratives for yourselves, I trust, when you go home) how Christ allowed this crisis deliberately to come upon Himself and upon His followers. He had been teaching the people many things; a great multitude had gathered round Him, and they were out in a lonely desert place. There were no supplies near, and the disciples almost seemed to have thought that the No. 20.

Master had been so enthusiastic in His teaching, so swallowed up with His spiritual work, as to have forgotten the course of time. He seemed not to have noticed the westering wheel of the sun, and to be oblivious to the panic, or, at any rate, the grave difficulty which would shortly present itself to Him, and them, and to all that great multitude, when night should have fallen, with no accommodation near at hand either for rest or refreshment. But, I say, it is when you read the other narratives that you see how, earlier in the day, Christ foresaw the difficulty. Not that He was in any strait. "He Himself knew what He would do;" but He asked the disciples, "Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?" to prove and to try them; to see if they understood where their resources lay; and to teach them, and to teach His Church in time to come, that although the work before us may seem to be overwhelming, although the demands may seem to be immense, and the supply utterly deficient, we are thereby urged to fling ourselves back the more certainly and quickly upon the infinite supply that is always ours, because Christ is with us. No crisis to Him; no difficulty to Him. "And when the day was now far spent, His disciples came unto Him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed." Exactly! The Lord is so spiritual that He does not keep a watch and ask what o'clock it is. It is a desert place, and the disciples seem to say, "Send them away, that they may forage for themselves; relieve us of the responsibility. We did not ask them to come here; and although it may look a little harsh to send them helter-skelter, as fast as they can go, to the little villages, with their white walls glimmering away in the distance, yet it is the only thing left, and there is still time if they make speed. We grant, as regards the