of such a life as this, how dark and rough, and unloving would even the noblest and tenderest lives that we have known appear beside it—how frail their weakness beside His lofty strength-how poor their courage beside His quiet constancy-how cold their friendship beside His burning love-how dull their purity beside His perfect spotlessness! In the light of such a vision we should read a deeper meaning in that last command to His disciples, on the night of His betrayal, "This do in remembrance of me," and should understand how the memory of His life, if it were not a mere occasional reminiscence, but an ever-present and all pervading principle, would be the beautifier of

our own.

But the memory of Christ is the memory of more than His beautiful and gracious human life.

It is the memory of One, who, through that life revealed God; of One, who said, "I do not stand before you alone, and speak to you by my own wisdom merely. One is with me-one whom you know not—even God, God whom you must know, whom you must love, through knowledge and love of whom your souls must live; and whom, that you may know Him, I have come to reveal to you, and that you may love Him, I have come to reveal to you as your Father who loves you, who forgives all your trespasses, who calls you into fellowship with Himself." His memory is the memory of one who brought these glad tidings

H

to men. They are glad tidings, in the knowledge of which we have been so trained, within the sound of which we have so habitually lived, that we cannot understand their fresh full life for those to whom they were a new revelation.

We live and move amid the glory and beauty of God's fair world-in the clear air of heaven and the bright shining of the sun on high, and we never think of the priceless blessings of the blowing wind and the joyous sunshine, or of the loss that would be ours were we to be shut up from these in silence and darkness. But bring out the captive from the dungeon, where the air is thick and the light pale, and set him on the mountain's brow, and he is unconscious almost of all else, save the glory and freedom of the wind and light. And so, could we, whom use has hardened, but transport ourselves for one hour from the society of men, whose life, whether they will or not, is moulded by the principles of the revelation of Christ-from the atmosphere of a Christian land—from the knowledge of all Christian truth-from the offices of all Christian charity-from the neighbourhood of all Christian law, and custom, and culture, to a land where the name of Christ has never been heard, where the principles of His Church have never had even the feeblest recognition, where the Christian idea of God is utterly unknown, we should be able, in some sort, to realize the sense of light and liberty and confidence which must

have filled the hearts of those who, waking from "the foul dream of heathen night," or quitting the oppressive rites and ordinances of the Jewish Law, came into the presence of the Messenger of God, who said, "God is your Father. He is in Me, and I am in Him. You see Him revealed in Me. He loves you with an everlasting love. Believe this, and your soul shall live."

Think, brethren, of all that this message, which Christ brought to men, implies. It still says to all men, all the world over, no matter under what influences their lives have been developed-no matter by what creed they hold, by what name they are called, "There is a heaven which is your rightful home. There God your Father dwells. He is not, as He is too often represented, dark in counsel, terrible in vengeance, harsh in character. He is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He is just, and true, and loving; hating nothing that He has made, hating only sin, and misery, and doubt, and fear, that hinder your believing Him, and trusting Him with all your heart. He does not alter from mood to mood like a wayward man, now forgiving, now exacting. He changes not. He is unaffected by all change of yours. Your love does not call forth His: your hate does not scare it away. Far above all variableness or any shadow of turning, He looks down upon you with a Father's changeless countenance, and loves you with an ever

lasting love. It is not for His sake He asks your faith and love. It is for yours; because He knows that in the spirit which loves Him, all baser loves must die-in the life which is bound in faith to His, all sin, and therefore all misery, must cease; from it all old things must pass away, to it all must become new. It moves on a new earth, under a new heaven -the heaven of God's manifested love."

That is the message brought to us by Christ, the only message in the belief of which any human soul can live.

You may sometimes hear other messages than this proclaimed as Christ's glad tidings-though they are not, and are not to be believed: messages which deny the right of every human soul to claim God as its Father, and Christ as its own messenger from God; which deny that one unalterable relation binds all human creatures to the great source from whom they came, to whom they must return; which make that merciful God's revelation in Jesus Christ His Son, not the revelation of an all-embracing love and a universal desire that we all should live in fellowship with him, but only the disclosure of a skilful way whereby a few may escape from a worm that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched. But the true gospel does not speak in this muffled and uncertain tone. It sets the broad bright truths in the fore-front; and lets the dark lines of sin and

sorrow, that cross them here and there, fall athwart them as lightly as they may. It does not hide the evil; but it proclaims, first and above all else, the sovereign might of good. It sets the health before the disease, the blessing above all curse, the eternal Fatherhood of God above all eclipse of human disbelief and unworthiness; saying to each human being, in the very voice of Him who died upon the Cross, "You are a child of God. Live then as becomes His child. All your sin and failure is but a falling away from that place in your Father's family which you were born to fill.”

Think, brethren, of what the world would be to us without this truth, of what life would be without this anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast. Think of what this truth will be to us, if we hold it fast, when we come to lie at "the last low verge of life," and when with our closing eyes we look past the light of setting suns, to catch some glimpse of a radiance beyond, in the region where the glory to be revealed lies veiled from our mortal vision; think of the hour and power of darkness, the bitterness of death, that then would fall upon the spirit; did it not believe that above and around and beneath it, bearing it up amid the last alarms, overshadowing it from all peril, was the changeless Fatherhood and forgiving love of the eternal God and as you think of this, and remember that all our knowledge of