XIX.

ST. ANDREW.

"One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother, Simon, and saith unto him: We have found the Messias (which is, being interpreted, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus."-ST. JOHN i. 40-42.

ST. ANDREW was a native of Bethsaida, a town of Galilee, on the coast of the Lake of Genesareth, and by trade a fisherman. His father's name was Jona, and he was the brother, as most have thought, the younger brother of Simon Peter. That he was, in spite of the disadvantages of an imperfect education, and a worldly calling that must have occupied much of his thoughts and time, a man of inquiring mind and sincere concern for the highest interests of his soul, may I think be assumed from his being found among the followers of that stern preacher of righteousness, St. John the Baptist.

He was no man of a wavering faith or lukewarm devotion who would consent to be a disciple of a teacher who read men's hearts so truly, and reproved

their sins so unsparingly. When we can still listen gladly to a preacher who is no prophesyer of smooth things, so long as we feel that he is preaching to us God's truth, we may accept it as a token that it is a real hungering after righteousness, and not merely an itching ear, or a restless curiosity, that has possession of our souls. People do not like to be spoken to as plainly as John the Baptist used to speak, unless their desire is not to be humoured, but to be saved.

It was at the feet of such a master that Andrew originally sat; and by him, he was, in a measure, prepared for the discipleship of Christ. He had no doubt often heard the Baptist speak of the still Mightier Teacher who was to come after him. He had listened to him as he unrolled the ancient prophecies, and foretold their speedy fulfilment. He knew that his present instructor's work was but preparatory to the richer and more gracious dispensation that was on the eve of being revealed.

And so, as he one day stood with his master by the river Jordan, and saw a Person coming towards them, upon Whom St. John looking said, "Behold the Lamb of God," he seems to have felt himself irresistibly drawn to the stranger. "He followed Him, and came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day"; and left Him a worshipper and a believer.

Any system, any philosophy, any human wisdom, however profitable and instructive as far as it goes, if it stop short of Christ, if it do not lead us ultimately to Him "in Whom are hid all the treasures of true wisdom and knowledge," must be unsatisfying to a soul

that has a painful consciousness of its own unworthiness and helplessness, and is casting about, as yet in vain, for some sure standing-ground on which to build its hopes. Human teachers are useful in proportion to their faithfulness, and the power they have received of God, to hold forth the Word of life. But they are not Christ; nor can they stand in the place of Christ. They can but point out the road: it is left for our own free choice to follow it. Our salvation does not depend upon the gifts of any mortal guide, but upon our finding out for ourselves where Jesus dwells, and abiding with Him.

St. Andrew, then, was the first known follower of our Blessed Lord. But he was more than this. He was, so to speak, the first missionary, the first who put in his sickle to the corn in the Church's harvest-field. He did not spend that night with his new Instructor, in His lowly dwelling, without learning that the spirit of the new religion which he had accepted was eminently not selfish and personal, but disseminative and corporate. He realised the fact that Christ was come upon the earth not so much to pick up outcast souls one by one, or to make the greatest saints out of the greatest sinners--which is some people's notion of the ordinary results of grace-as to knit together His elect into one communion and fellowship-to set up a kingdom-to build a Church, and in doing so, to make the welfare of each individual more or less dependent upon the growth and development of the whole.

If there is one corrupt element in our nature more than another that the Gospel is framed to eradicate, it

is selfishness, even religious selfishness-for there is such a thing-the notion, that is, that Christ died for us. alone: that we need only concern ourselves about our own souls that, as wicked Cain said, "we are not our brother's keeper": that it matters not if the whole world perish, so long as we ourselves and a few others who think like us-whom we therefore take upon ourselves to call the elect, are saved. You will look in vain through the New Testament for countenance for such views. As the Church is a universal brotherhood, so is it with a spirit proper to a member of such a community that every individual Christian must be actuated.

St. Andrew felt this. He did not think that when he had found Christ he had found a treasure to be hidden and selfishly appropriated to his own comfort and profit alone. No sooner was he convinced of the reality of his discovery than he wished others to share it, and be the better for it too. He is the first Christian example of the grace of charity and the power of brotherly love.

Be assured that this is the only true evangelical temper. Whatever gift or privilege, whether temporal or spiritual, by God's providence we possess, we double the enjoyment of it by communicating it freely with our brethren. As in worldly matters, "there is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty "; so in spiritual things, so far as I have observed, the religion that is self-absorbed is universally cheerless and gloomy. He who would fully know what the love of

Christ is, must be content, as was St. Paul, "to spend and be spent for his brethren." Whatever he lays out

in such a cause will be as much for his own soul's health as theirs.

And

St. Andrew was, moreover, the human instrument in bringing the first Gentiles to Christ-" the Greeks who desired to see Jesus." They had heard of Jesus, and wished to see Him, and they applied for the purpose to Philip, apparently because he was the first of our Lord's immediate followers who fell in their way. what does Philip do? He comes to tell Andrew. But why? Why not, himself, introduce them to Christ? especially as he was a man of like disposition, and had himself before been instrumental in awakening the curiosity of Nathanael to come and see the despised Nazarene? My own opinion is that he told Andrew because he was sure he should find in him a kindred spirit one who would sympathise with these poor inquirers: one who would know no distinction of race: one who would be puffed up with no vain conceit of Jewish privileges in dealing with the strangers: one who followed the promptings of his own heart, and not the selfish calculations of pride or prejudice: one who delighted in any enlargement of the borders of his Master's kingdom, and who, by the instinct of a loving heart more than by the grasp of a powerful understanding, already anticipated the time when there should be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, lut all one in Christ Jesus. The great mystery of the Gospel, hidden before both from priests and prophets, this unlettered fisherman of Galilee, by the unerring