it was so wonderfully constructed to the glory of God. It was to handle gifts and sacrifices with the purity which God's service required. Its skill and power were to be devoted to the cause of religion; and in that hallowed cause it was not to hold any bribes or to touch any unclean thing.

And did not the blood of the ram of consecration point to the blood of the Lamb of God, which fulfilled all types and exhausted all sacrifices? Jesus realised in His own person the typical character of the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood. He passed through the same solemn rite, not in shadow, but in reality. In the days

took part of the same. He was differentiated from the lower creatures in the same way that man is by his human brain, and human hands, and human feet; and on these distinctive parts of His humanity was sprinkled the blood of consecration to the office of our great High Priest. And that blood was not the blood of bulls and goats, but His own precious blood. It touched His hands and His feet, for they were nailed to the cross, and touched His ear, for His head was wounded by the crown of thorns. And when He appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, He said to them, "Behold My hands and My feet!" It was the same flesh as before, now

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glorified and made immortal, but still bearing the marks of the nails. He had passed through His baptism of blood into His new life in heaven, but even on the throne the marks of His consecration are seen upon Him; and throughout all eternity He will appear a Lamb as it had been slain." And in Him the wounds of the cross, as our great Intercessor within the veil, are an ever-present and ever-prevailing plea with God for the pardon and justification of the repentant sinner. He has an abiding witness in Himself in heaven in the blood on His right thumb, and on His right toe, and on His right ear, of His entire consecration, all His human body, and human nature, and human life, to the work of human redemption.

And upon everyone who believes in Him He puts the marks of the Lord Jesus. He enters into

covenant-relationship with you by touching with His own blood your right thumb, and right toe, and right ear, in token of your entire consecration; and you can say with adoring gratitude, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and the Father, be glory and dominion for ever and ever." What a wonderful thought, that the blood of the highest Being in the universe touches that part of your body which proves your high birth and great destiny-touches it in order to make you of one blood and one nature with Him, in order to make all that your right thumb represents holy to the Lord! In the Colosseum at Rome, when a gladiator obtained the victory over his fellow, he looked up to the throne of the emperor to know what he should do with his conquered opponent, who lay at his mercy. If the thumb of the emperor pointed upwards towards the sky, his life was to be spared; but if the thumb pointed downwards towards the earth, then he was to be put to death. When the fatal movement of the thumb was seen by the spectators, the wild cry, "Habet!" rang through the amphitheatre, and the doom of the gladiator was sealed. This was not the cry that rang though the universe when we were wounded and vanquished by sin, and Death claimed the victory over us, and we lay at his mercy. The thumb of God, as it were, was not turned to the earth in condemnation, but upward to the sky in deliverance, as the voice of the Intercessor was heard: "Save him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom." The Saviour's hand was nailed to the tree of shame; and the blood that flowed from that pierced hand has been applied, as it were, to the hand of man to undo the evil which it has done since the fatal hour when our first parents plucked the forbidden fruit, and so brought all its sin and misery into the world. And now He says to every one of you who wishes to be His disciple, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing." And thus convinced and satisfied, thus conquered by His love, and

marked, as it were, on the thumb by this contact of faith with the wounds of the cross that effected your deliverance, you are thenceforward no longer your own, but His-united to Him by blood relationship. And surely it is your highest distinction to be so consecrated. What an instrument for good the thumb so marked ought to be! What noble work it ought to do in the world! handling the things of common life, it should do so in righteousness, and so invest them with a sacred character. The most ordinary every-day actions which the worldly man performs for selfish earthly purposes, you should perform to the glory of God.

Even when

Surely for the thumb that has on it the blood of Christ, that is joined by blood-covenant to His thumb, as it were, the injunction is hardly necessary : "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." The hard horny hand of the day-labourer or handicraftsman, with such a blood consecration on it, must be as clean and noble in its own way as the soft white hand of a queen that holds the sceptre. The right hand whose thumb is thus marked should use the saw, and guide the plough, and wield the hammer, and drive the spade, and ply the oar, and employ the pen, more faithfully and honestly and efficiently than those who have not that consecration, or that high and holy motive to make all their labour-labour in the Lord. “What is that in thine hand?" God says to all His people whose right thumb is marked with the blood of His Son. And when you attempt any task to which you are called by God, He will teach you so to use the means at your command, however slender they may be, and however humbly you may think of them, and He will endow them with such a power that they will do as much good for yourselves and others in their own way as Moses accomplished by his miraculous rod. He will establish the work of your hands upon you-yea, the work of your hands He will establish it. And, faithful in little things, you are qualifying yourselves for the higher parts and the greater things of life.

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Elihu says, in a very remarkable passage in the Book of Job, 'He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know His mark." That is to say, God places a mark on the hand of every man, so that you can tell from it what kind of work he is best fitted to do. You see one man's hand, and you say at once, "That is a painter's hand; it is fitted only to hold the brush." You see another kind of hand, and you say, That is a musician's hand; those long supple fingers are made to strike the keys of the organ or the piano." You see a third person's hand, and you say, "That is a mechanic's hand, the hand of an inventor or of an artisan, who does clever things in wood, or iron, or brass." And you see another kind of hand still, and you know from its delicacy, and yet firmness and precision, that it is the hand of a surgeon, made for operations so vital and critical that the deviation of a hair's-breadth in the searching knife would be fatal. The hand is a

most expressive member; and it would seem as if God had predestinated each man from his birth to the work for which he is best adapted by the type of his hand.

We know the character of the hand from the nature of the handiwork, and vice-versa. A man's hand becomes like the kind of work he does-as Shakespeare says, the dyer's hand is like the stuff he works in. When Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon of Rome was opened, sixty years ago, some doubted as to this being his last resting-place, but all uncertainty vanished when the thumb of the skeleton hand was exposed to the light. It had the characteristic roughness which constant holding of the easel gives even to the bone of a painter's thumb, The thumb-mark of each of you is perfectly distinct and individual in childhood, and manhood, and old age. Other marks of identification change, but the thumb-mark changes not. Its characteristic lines are preserved in all circumstances. So let it be with all the work of your hand. Let the hall-mark of the thumb on which the blood of Christ has been set, consecrating you to be a priest unto God and the Father, and to yield yourselves a living sacrifice to Him-let that hall-mark be clear, and distinct, and characteristic on all your work, so that it may be seen by everyone to be wrought in God. Let your commonest daily labour be Christian work. If you have the blood of your Redeemer on your thumb, it is the earnest of the redemption of your whole body for which you are working and waiting, and for the accomplishment of which your work as well as your worship here is a daily preparation. All that is "under your thumb," as the common phrase puts it, all that is represented by your thumb and wrought by your thumb, will partake of your consecration. There may not be much in your hand, or it may not seem much, but you will make the best use of it, and you will find in your happy experience that to him that hath, and makes the best use of what he hath, more shall be given. Raised above every other creature on earth by the possession of a thumb, the right use of that thumb by the consecration of the blood of the Son of God, will raise you to a fellowship with Him nearer than angels or archangels can ever know.

But there is another side to this matter. You may not only refuse this consecration, but in a spiritual sense you may deprive yourselves of what is the distinction and glory of your humanity. Our

man.

Saviour spoke of the duty of even cutting off a right hand when it was a cause of offence; for it was better to enter heaven maimed than with whole members to be cast into hell. But on the other hand, there is a mortal sin in cutting off a right hand when it might be made an instrument of righteousness for the glory of God and the good of So conscious were the ancients of the value and usefulness of the thumb, that it was quite a common thing for the Roman soldiers to cut off their thumbs in order to avoid being pressed into active service; and in recent years young men have mutilated themselves in this manner to prevent their being chosen as conscripts in the French army The way to render an enemy incapable of future resistance or harm was to cut off his thumbs; and this was what Adonibezek did to the three-score and ten kings whom he had conquered, and what was done in return to himself when he was conquered by a mightier foe. The person who was thus mutilated was called a poltroon, from the Latin word signifying a thumb.

Now, there are spiritual poltroons, who thus maim themselves in a spiritual sense in order to escape service as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Multitudes of lives with great possibilities have been utter failures because men and Women have deprived themselves, by their unbelief, or indolence, or worldliness, of the power of doing the duty to which God had called, and for which He had qualified them. They were intended by the very type and character of their hand, as it were, to fill certain places and do certain work for God and for the world; but when they were summoned to their work, they excused themselves on one plea or another, or they disqualified themselves for it by their own wilful faults. God forbid that any of you should be found among these spiritual failures! Let the blood of your Redeemer redeem you from the vanity of your life, and consecrate your powers and faculties to obey every call of God. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." "Take my life, and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee."

CHAPTER I.

PENNYROYAL.

E really depresses me," Mr. Smith said "makes me feel down in the dumps! And out on a pleasuretrip like this, it ain't pleasant -it really ain't fair!"

"You needn't speak to him, father."

Mr. Smith was quite aggrieved, and he went on carving the chicken with a depressed sigh.

They were out on the Lake of Killarney in the hotel boat, and they were all holders of Messrs. Cook's tickets for a tour in "the Emerald Isle." That gave them, as it were, an introduction to each other-or so Mr. Smith thought; and as he was the most sociable of men, it gave him positive annoyance to have one of the party sitting remote from the others, his back towards them, and his grave emotionless face seeming to look at nothing in particular. For if he did not attend or pay any heed to the people in the boat, he

certainly paid as little attention to the scenery and this annoyed the worthy alderinan also.

Mr. Smith was in a perpetual state of exclamation. He seemed to regard the expedition as his own altogether, and his high spirits were really almost contagious.

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"My dear, he has not had a holiday for ten years, he told me," the silvery-haired lady in the stern of the boat had whispered to her daughter. He has a large tannery in the South of England-fancy the joy of this after a tannery, and a tannery odour in one's nostrils for ten years!"

To which Margaret Vibart had smiled

"My dear mother, I am as willing as you are that he should enjoy himself; and he is most obliging to do all the carving-"

"And the tipping, Margaret."