Church, to leave the old faith as we received it. This was the law: "Tell ye your children of it; and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." Thus the Church was made to depend on us, the salvation of all generations was made to depend on us. This is a fearful thought, almost too fearful to bear. The salvation of all after generations depends on us. And yet we are careless about it, ungenerous, little-minded, sparing, selfish in saving souls.

Yet still we have among us the Church, which is a refuge from our selfishness and she is from time to time calling upon us tó exercise this privilege of taking refuge with her by our alms. We are for ever being called upon to aid in handing on the Gospel, the one sound faith, the wisdom hidden from of old, to our posterity. We are invited to be fellowworkmen with Apostles, primitive confessors, martyrs, bishops, saints, men who raised dead bodies, workers of miracles, lords over evil spirits, mighty teachers, masters in Israel. This was their office to hand on the faith, to teach it to those who came after them, to feed the

little ones of Christ. Such was the task which they were foremost in; and to this day we make mention of their names with reverence, because of their faithfulness in their generation. Surely this is a great privilege for such unloving Christians as we are, full of ourselves, full of the world's taint, full of earth and all that is therein. Yet there is no danger of selfishness intruding here. We do not come out from others in this. We are not singular. We are not ostentatious. We are but a few of many, of whom God taketh count, and watcheth their hands and hearts as they go by to the treasury of the temple. The brightest saint in God's kingdom has no temptation to selfishHe is but one, one little one, among the thousand stars that are thickly sown, like seeds of light, all over the dark skies, waiting for a still more glorious brightness, when they shall grow and shine in the kingdom of their Father, when the heavens shall be new, and the face of the earth covered with another freshness, being baptized with fire. We are not to ask ourselves where our selfdenial is to end, when we have done enough, when the measure of our sacrifice is full. This

ness.

is the spirit of a slave rather than a son. It is never full. There is never self-denial enough ; all is self-denial in the school of Christ. We have a life in our veins, we have not laid that down yet beneath the Cross. The blood of martyrdom would not fill the cup. The martyrs themselves are but unprofitable servants, though they are as Angels in our eyes. Why are we clinging to these perishable things? Surely we do not love them. Our home is not here. It is very far away, we are pining for it. We are athirst for God.

But perchance it may be said, this is an unnatural state. We do love these things; "we have set our hearts, it cannot be concealed, we have set them fondly on earth, and the green things and the bright things that are upon the earth." It cannot be. You cannot love the world nor the world you. The Cross has been planted in your hearts. You and the world, you and your affections, you and your idols must part for ever, part in the blood that flowed where the stern Cross went deepest in. You and all your dreams must part, O ye of the Christian Circumcision! The kingdom of Heaven is within you.

You are lifted above

You are not your own. yourselves. You are washed with a heavenly washing. You have the gift, which is above all other gifts, the gift of the justified, the Presence of God within you. Ever since the time that you were fearfully and wonderfully made into sons of God and heirs of heaven, this inward kingdom has been unfolding itself in your souls. First one and then another of your lusts and affections have been mastered. Sacraments, providences, ordinances, discipline, ascetic habits, sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly, all have been drawing your natural infirmities more and more within the power of this supernatural kingdom. The heart is like a tract of barren country, hardly recovered to fertility. Still, year after year, every prayer and act of faith, every selfdenial and suffering, has been taking in some little portion from the wilderness. Angry tempers, idleness, childish sins, bad habits clinging about us and hindering us, are by degrees brought under the dominion of our new nature. The kingdom of Satan grows narrower day by day, though here and there. the waste brown sand again encroaches on

the green. Our very sins themselves alter, and evil as they are and impure, still disclose to us the presence of virtue in the soil. They witness to our being more or less religious. We are being transformed into Angels, and more than Angels, though suffering here. Yea, more than Angels, for when we wake up at the last to sleep no more for ever, we shall be satisfied with His likeness Who was Man, and and is Man, and Who has our nature upon Him where He is. We shall be in some high sense like Him, else see Him as He is. what unknown operations our regenerate but still striving souls are now the scene and the place. That inward kingdom is unfolding itself there. But selfishness is hindering it. Self is keeping back its glory and its power. Self is making it jealous of opening out and disclosing itself. Self is struggling against the Spirit and the Sacraments. Therefore deny that self, and the empire of Christ will stretch forth from the river even unto the great sea, from Baptism until eternity begins. Therefore mortify, treat hardly, and bring under that evil self, and then will that inward kingdom be

could not we endure to

How fearful to think of