quickens His submissive disciples is a constant reproach to the spiritual deadness of those to whom His love is unknown, or over whom it has no power. Over and over again in experiences that have torn the hearts of those most deeply concerned have Christ's words been fulfilled: "I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother . . . He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."

And this must be so unless those amongst whom we live as Christ's disciples will yield to His love. Truth cannot but arouse debate with error. The spirit of the world is, and ever must be, in irreconcilable antagonism to the Spirit of Christ. The full liberty of mind, of heart, of conscience, of life, which is possible only to those who have become the bond-slaves of Jesus Christ, is inconceivable and intolerable to those who either know Him not, or who wilfully reject Him. And "the disciple is not above his Master." Well is it if he be as his Master. "As they have persecuted Me so will they persecute you also."

When the demoniac, clothed and in his right mind, sat at the feet of Jesus, how perfect was his happiness. When Jesus had to cross the lake and return to his Father's business, how lovingly and earnestly the man who had been healed pleaded to be allowed to rejoice yet longer in the sunshine of Christ's presence, and to company with His omnipotent healer. But to him came the message which has often sounded the knell of cherished hopes and affections: "Return to thy house, and declare how great things God hath done for thee." If his friends were among the number of those who had united in requesting Jesus "to depart from them," he probably at once learned one of the saddest and yet one of the most bracing spiritual lessons, in discovering how impossible it is, from one's own spiritual blessedness, to forecast the power of the truth over the hearts that stand nearest in kindred. Sometimes the heaviest cross that a man or woman has to bear is the desire, seemingly unsatisfied, to make the preciousness of Christ's love known to the hearts of dearest friends, or the effort, apparently entirely baffled, to bring them to submit to Christ's yoke. From the lips that said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour," fell also the saddest of human words as, looking upon His own city, he wept over it, and cried: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." The death agonies of Him, who came to lay down His life for the sheep, were embittered by the savage taunt, "He saved others, Himself He cannot save." And sometimes the disciple has to tread the same rough pathway, has to witness the apparently fruitless expenditure of faith, of love, of self-denial, has to reap the bitter harvest of resentment, where there should be gratitude, of misrepresentation and calumny where there ought to be heartfelt acceptance of the truth. Even here and now the disciple must sometimes be "as his Master." Well for him, well for her, if at such times the

heart can find its true song in Whittier's glowing

verse:

"To Thee our full humanity,

Its joys and pains belong; The wrong of man to man on Thee Inflicts a deeper wrong.

"Apart from Thee all gain is loss, All labour vainly done;

The solemn shadow of Thy Cross

Is better than the sun."

III. And yet it is blessedly true that the division and unrest are external, while in the disciple's heart there is a peace which nothing can disturb.

Here again, what is true of the Master may be nay is, true, in large measure, of the disciple. "I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." The centre of life is the heart. In the home, in the business, in the social relationships, there may be much to fret and ruffle the surface, which is yet absolutely powerless to touch the deep abiding stores of Christ's own peace in the heart. Look out upon the waves of the Atlantic, when they are rolling in all their fascinating beauty and seemingly resistless force, driven onwards by the pressure of the western gale. Judge by the roaring billows, and you think that even the mighty ocean is stirred to its lowest depths. But you know that only a few feet below the tcrn and agitated surface the waters rest in an abiding calm, which the wildest gales cannot disturb. And in this we have a symbol of the heart fixed in love for and trust upon Christ Jesus. However wild the tempest or severe the trial, or disturbed the surface of life, within there is a peace which the world does not give, and which the things of the world cannot take away.

So that it is not from the Christian, but the non-Christian, that the debate, the division, the fire, the sword arise. The true Christian cannot help sometimes being, in his faithfulness to the Master, the occasion, but it is not in him that the division should be found. It is produced by, and it rules in, the hearts of those who either cannot, or who will not, see things as they are. "How is it," said Christ," that ye know not how to interpret this time? When ye see a cloud rising in the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye know how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that ye know not how to interpret this time? And why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

Looking into the faces all turned towards Him, and presenting in their varied features and expressions the wider circles of men, and nations, and centuries over which His vision ranged, and to which His imperishable words were addressed, He sees them quick to discern imme diate and temporary things. They could read the face of the sky, they could decide matters of business, they were keen and prompt in buying and selling, and getting gain, but with the Great Taskmaster they were not prompt to make terms. In the great strife, in the conflict between good

and evil, truth and error, the church and the world, the flesh and the spirit, they were either too slow, or altogether unwilling to take a part. The Saviour depicts Himself as flinging fire broadcast amongst men of this type. Those who cannot stand the test will be consumed, those whom the fire of His love and truth and self-sacrifice do not purify and redeem will by them be divided from the true inheritance, the true life, the eternal home, It is useless to cry Peace, peace," when there is no peace. It was this that the men of our Lord's own day were doing. They were pluming themselves upon their descent from Abraham when God was disowning them. They were seeking to compass the death of Christ, and thus plotting the awful ruin of their lives, their temple, and their nation. And we can but too easily, if we choose, imitate their folly and their sin.

Let

us rather be wise to discern the spirit of the time, Let us hear the voice of Him that speaketh. Let us heal our division with Christ by complete and loving submission to His will. And then, even if our father and our mother forsake us, He will take us up; if friends fall away He will console us; if the tempest of evil and worldliness rages around us, in the moment of greatest peril will come His almighty word, "Peace, be still." The soul over which Christ has since breathed his first Sunday evening blessing, "Peace be with you," can weather al earthly storms, can endure all earthly conflicts, and can wait with confident expectation for the time when so many earthly judgments will be reversed, and those who were divided from friends, and kindred, and worldly pleasures here, for the sake of Christ and of His truth, will be united to him for ever in the indissoluble bonds and the unchanging peace of heaven. RICHARD LOVETT, M.A.

"H

HOMESPUN HOMILIES.

ON BEGINNINGS.

ONOUR to the beginner," says a wisehearted Arab proverb, "even though the follower does better." We may recall, without quoting, a host of proverbs of every country in praise or blame, or simply in exemplification of various ways of beginning things.

There are conscious and unconscious beginnings, eager and reluctant, wise and foolhardy, pleasant and painful, premature and postponed. Our most momentous enterprises, life itself, we begin unConsciously. Looking back on our dearest friendships, our chief interests, our fatal mistakes, how often do we find their obscure beginnings, if traceable at all, have been involuntary, were for long unrealised.

There seems little use in taking thought about these unintentional beginnings, except to put ourselves on guard against such as make for evil.

What of those that are matters of choice? Men may easily be classed as either beginners or followers; sometimes one set takes the honours and the other the drudgery; sometimes the honours rightly fall where they are due, and sometimes

rightly or wrongly the award is blame, and even that is apt to be distributed unfairly.

So much has been said by wiseacres of all times in praise of perseverance, of the safe if industrious follower, that we may well consider for a while, and approve the good done by those who have courage, hope, and a high heart sufficient to make a beginning. Without these people to renew the life of society, how stagnant and dull it would become in each department of life! "One good custom would corrupt the world," until we were all rusty and moss-grown formalists. "Change is the mask that all continuance wears," and the man who plans new methods of carrying on religious work, the woman who is not afraid to be unconventional in trying to benefit those of her own circle, the teacher who strains the old wine of truth into new bottles of instruction, the worker on a large scale or a small who uses his God-given instinct to improve, devise, experiment, as he reaches after betterment of his work, these while they are changing the form are really giving permanence to the spirit of goodness. It is so easy to criticise, so difficult to work out the ideal.

Are you held back from instinctive action by fear of being misunderstood? Have you heart and energy to make a beginning, to turn some fresh leaf, to break ground in a new direction? Take counsel, consider, first, but do not take counsel and consider for ever; something must be ventured, something risked. There must be some bold output of the will, some daring and hazard, whether you take a railway journey, stock your shop, print your book, or cut your hay.

And so in smaller matters make a beginning, and take the risk. The old methods may have become clogged with abuses, make new departures; old rules may have become hackneyed, obsolete, frame new ones.

Perhaps the matter in question is a purely personal one (as far as any human concern is ever purely personal). On looking into your mind, you are confronted by plans for self-improvement, good resolutions, methodical habits, all thought out, and fully intended. Why have they come to nothing? Because you have never made a beginning. Commit yourself, make a plunge, take the first step-in one way or another, begin now. Do not be afraid to do and say what you feel to be right. "If we live truly we shall see truly," said Emerson. "We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state. . . . We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born."

These seem great words to apply to the small possibilities of daily life, yet for daily life we need the spirit they contain. To be frank and honest, and true, in the parlour as well as in public, demands that we should have the courage of our convictions, and be true not only to what our friends have a right to expect of us, but to what we have a right to expect of ourselves. "If any one imagines," says the same thinker, speaking of self-reliance, "that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day." Here is a beginning for us to make!

J. M. S. M.

Jo

AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

OHN LOCKE pronounced that the sermons of Archbishop Tillotson were "masterpieces," and Le Clerc in his "Bibliotheque Choisée" for 1705 is equally laudatory in his account of the folio of his sermons of 1699, being the second edition of those that had been published during his Grace's lifetime. He declares that "the archbishop's merit was above any recommendation which he could give; that it was formed from the union of an extraordinary clearness of head, a great penetration, an exquisite talent of reasoning, a profound knowledge of true divinity, a solid piety, a most singular perspicuity and unaffected elegance of style, with every other quality that could be desired in a man of his order; and that, whereas compositions of this kind are commonly merely rhetorical and popular declamations, and much better to be heard from the pulpit than to he read in print, his are for the most part exact dissertations, and capable of bearing the test of the most rigorous examination."

Probably Bishop Warburton's appreciative but very critical estimate better represents the later estimate of those sermons. That the good Archbishop had caught the ear of an immense public is witnessed by the unquestioned fact that the publishers vied with each other to obtain his MSS., and that his widow actually received two thousand five hundred guineas for his posthumous sermons,

equal to ten thousand guineas to-day. Not even Charles Spurgeon has come up to this.

A recent attempt was made to revive the name of Tillotson and the fame of his sermons in a bulky volume of 579 pages, entitled "Tillotson's Sermons. Selected, edited, and annotated, by the Rev. G. W. Weldon, M.A., Vicar of Bickley, Kent" (London: Ward & Downey, 1886). The thing is affectionately done, albeit a device of printing in smaller type portions that might be omitted, points to a present-day furtive use of them that surely ought to be impossible. Sooth to say, they are not sermons for these times, their one merit being that when pedantry and ethnic morality ruled in the pulpits of our country-as well Conformist as Nonconformist, but Nonconformist equally with Conformist-Tillotson spoke naturally, simply, directly. But, however obsolete, these sermons must always rank their preacher among "famous divines" and hence his place in our series was inevitable. Probably his greatest services to theological literature was the loving editing (with endless laboriousness) of the MSS. of Dr. Isaac Barrow and Dr. Wilkins (Bishop of Chester) Personally, as succeeding the deprived archbishop (Sancroft), he was bitterly-nay, malignantlyassailed by the Non-jurors, but bore himself to the end admirably. His letters to Lady Russell (widow of the beheaded Lord Russell) and his more private memoranda, reveal him as a devout, humble, patient, generous man of God, to whom "high place" in either Church or State was rather felt as bondage than dignity.

Our example of Archbishop Tillotson's hand<writing is drawn from the British Museum. It is more easily read than most facsimiles, but may here given in print :

it;

London, Jan. 17th, 1686.

be

HONORD. SR-I am heartily ashamed to have reca second Letter from you before I had acknowledg'd the kindnes of the first. It came too late to be made use of in my L Bp. of London's cause; for though I recit before the last day of his appearance, yet the pleading of his cause (at weh I was present) was over before I had & at his next appearance though he desir'd to have offer'd something further, it was not admitted. I did not know how soon others might be call'd before that Court, weh if they had, very good use might have been made it; for I have seen the judgm of several eminent Lawyers upon this Point, but have not reed that satis faction fro any that I have done from yo". But that signifies little. I have shewn it to a great Man of acquaintance, & of a piercing judgm' who is of the sand opinion, & would receive no denyal till I let him take a

UNT Caroline always says she hates boys."

Maurice muttered the words as he got out at the little station, from which he turned with reluctant steps to his home. It was the first time in his fourteen years of life that he had ever turned to his home reluctantly. For more than two months he had been dreading this home-coming, and now it seemed even worse than he had feared.

Two months ago!-scarcely more than two months ago he had been summoned unexpectedly to the schoolmaster's private room; and had stood there, twisting his hands, while the master murmured that there was bad news that his mother was worse that she was dead. When he looked back again to that dreadful moment, it seemed strange to remember that he had not cried; he sometimes asked himself if it was really true that he had received the news without being sorry. And yet, since the days on which that news had come, life had been as blank as a world without

a sun.

Only the evening before he had hastened through his lessons that he might write a long letter to his mother, full of sorrow for her illness, of jokes, of schoolboy news, such a letter as he never wrote except to her. She had never seen it. He would never write such a letter again. There was no one now who wanted to hear from him. He always wrote proper letters to his father. There was no one to whom he could write as he really felt. In the whole world he had only loved his mother. He couldn't love everybody as some people did!

And now Aunt Caroline was to be mistress of the house, and everything would be as she fancied it and she hated boys-and she wouldn't be glad to see him, and she would be sure to get him into "rows" with his father. If he could have come back determined to defy her, there might have been some pleasure in returning-only he couldn't he could not so soon escape from the sobering influence of his mother's death. When they last parted she had taken him in her arms and told him that when he came back he must be "better" to his Aunt, and though he had received the reproof without a word, it was still in his mind, he had not forgotten it. It was not the least of his many trials that evening that he could not even look forward to being rebellious.

At the gate he paused. A sick, miserable feeling made him linger at the entrance to the garden. Oh! how could he bear to go on to the house where there was no mother now to welcome him? All was as before. The Gloire de Dijon

roses were clustering on the little parsonage, the stocks were brilliant, and at a little distance a hedge of sweet peas was bright with many colours. The evening twilight lay softly on the garden, and the clouds in the blue sky were tinged with evening glow. Already the leaves of the old laburnum tree were touched with yellow as if the tree had flowered again. Everything seemed the same. And he must go on to the house, and receive Aunt Caroline as mistress there!

Oh, if Aunt Caroline had loved his mother, if she were sorry, it would not be so hard. But she had always wanted to have the management: there had been some disputes-it was all hateful to remember. She had nursed his mother through eleven months of illness, but then she had thought herself so superior, just because she gave them money for their household when they could all have lived more happily without her! And now she was head, and he must submit to her; there had never been any trouble in submitting to his mother. But still he must try to be better than he had been. The dear mother had wished it, that should be enough for him.

The little gate clicked. Within the open door of the house some one who was listening for a footstep heard the sound-Aunt Caroline herself, who was waiting for her nephew, divided, as he was, between good resolutions and distaste. What should she do with this disobedient boy who had never shown her more than the barest civility, who was no doubt determined to give any amount of trouble, and to resist her authority with all bis power? Everything had been so quiet since the funeral, and she had felt that her brother leaned upon her, nay, something had whispered that now she had full control, the domestic economy was in better order than before. Poor Elsie was so delicate and then she was such a child! And her husband had allowed her to have her own way in everything; had even allowed Maurice to have an absurd amount of freedom because his mother was so devoted to the boy. That could not continue she would of course be kind to Maurice, but still he must learn to be obedient; she had the mother's rule now (she did not ask herself if she had also acquired the mother's love). In her heart she felt Maurice an unmitigated trial, suggestive of nothing but muddy boots and stubbornness, much more obstinate by nature than his delicate, fragile mother, or the gentle father, absorbed in books and parish duties. But still she would try to do her duty; he was her nephew, and she would be kind to him.

So she stood at the door in her black dress and black mittens, as Maurice came slowly up the garden-path-perhaps a little more touched than she had expected to be by his dejected, miserable look. At the door she received him, holding out her hand-it was obvious that he had no wish to