voice of words; one grave question, mysterious in its source but resistless in its authority; a question proposed in a language of earth, but speaking of one persecuted in heaven; this has sufficed to change the whole course and current of a life; this has at once turned activity into prostration, zeal into fear, pride into abasement, and fury against others into anxiety for himself. 'I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And I answered, Who art Thou, Lord? And He said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest. And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.'

My brethren, the more we reflect upon this marvellous history, the more real does it become to us, the more striking in its incidents, the more ample in its instruction for ourselves.

We are assembled together on Trinity Sunday; that great festival of our Church which sums up in one last commemoration all the scattered items of doctrine which have diversified thus far the course of the Christian year. Trinity Sunday is, in brief, the Festival of Revelation. It gathers into one whole all that we have been taught of God; solemnly charges us to remember the primeval disclosure, 'The Lord our God is one Lord;' warns us that we suffer not any diversity of operations to make us lose sight of the unity of the Godhead; bids us be careful how we suffer in ourselves any such thought of mediation or of atonement, of grace or of inspiration, as might separate into three wills or three essences those Holy Persons, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,

whom the Scriptures of truth everywhere recognize and reveal; and yet, on the other hand, reminds us how necessary to the Christian's hope and to the Christian's life is a true faith in each one of these; how incomplete and how formidable were the conception of a God who created, without the further disclosure of a Divine Person who redeemed, and of a Divine Person who sanctifies. Trinity Sunday is not, as some would make it, the commemoration of a formal doctrine, for which man has had to invent a term, and in which the life of the soul is scarcely interested or concerned. Rather is it the commemoration of the fulness of God, of the completeness of His work for us, of His nearness to us, of His minute as well as boundless care and love toward us; that which fills up what else would be most defective, that which combines what else were most disjointed, brings into harmony conflicting attributes, and gives distinctness and personality to the mysterious and the abstract. This it is which brings God home to us as a Father, and enables us, whenever and however far we have wandered, to say in our hearts with a resolute hope, 'I will arise and return.' This it is which turns the character of Christ, and the example of Christ, and the sufferings of Christ, into a living and life-giving trust; saying to us, He who lived for you, and He who died, is in deed and in truth your Lord and your God. This it is which transforms the influence of the Spirit into the sympathy of a Person; of One who helps our prayers, strengthens our infirmities, is grieved with our sins, and glad when we are comforted. And this it is which, instead of leaving us with three separate agencies, binds them all for us into one; calls them, not Three, but, a Trinity;

assures us that the will of the Saviour and the will of the Comforter is not less the will of the Father; that the Father gave the Son because He loved us, and that the Father and the Son will come to us in the Spirit and make an abode in us not as Three but as One. Trinity Sunday is the Festival of Revelation; and Revelation itself is the Revelation, not of three Persons only, but of one God.

And He it was, even this one God, speaking, as He always speaks, by the mouth of the everliving Saviour, before whom Saul of Tarsus lay low upon the earth, and said, 'What shall I do, Lord?' O, my brethren, it is the thing which we need, every one of us, to be able to look up to heaven and behold a Person there; to turn from a creed of lifeless abstractions, and to receive in its stead the revelation of a living God; to be able to say, not only, I believe in the omnipotence of God, in His eternity, in His holiness and justice and truth, but, I believe in God: not only, I believe in the incarnation of Christ, in His atonement, in His mediation and intercession, but, I believe in Jesus: not only, I believe in the influence of the Holy Spirit, in His operation, in His converting and quickening grace, but, I believe in the Holy Ghost. We want to be able to look up to heaven, and know that behind that screen, that veil, that cloudfor it is nothing more—there is One to whom we are something and who is something to us; One to whom we may speak, speak in the heart, and be sure that He hears; One of whom we may ask a question, and know that it will be answered; One to whom we may apply, and not doubt that He will help-devote ourselves, and know that He accepts the sacrifice. It is in this turning

from the doctrine to the Person, in this sight of Him who is invisible, that the essence of conversion, and the power of spiritual life, really consists. Then at last may it be said of each one of us, as it was said, in the very crisis of his history, of him of whom the text tells us, 'Behold, he prayeth.' For then, then at length, will prayer have become a power and a reality, being addressed to One who is, and who is known, by one who wants, and who expects.

'What shall I do, Lord?' The words are few, but they are significant and they are pregnant words. On St Paul's lips, at that moment, they meant, 'I see my past life to have been, with all its propriety of conduct and with all its zeal for God, a folly and a madness; I see my boasted privileges a delusion, my treasured knowledge a lie; I see that what I thought obedience was rebellion, and what I deemed a mortal sin was in truth the very will of God. And now, Lord, in this uprooting of all that was, be Thou my Guide into that which shall be: I know not-teach Thou me-what is truth: I know not-teach Thou me-what is duty: in this hour of confusion and utter darkness, be Thou the lamp of my path, the light of my steps. Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'

And the same words had for him thenceforward a fresh meaning with every successive circumstance of life from his conversion to his martyrdom. We will not stay to trace it through changes in which St Paul was but the type of all Christians. When the path of duty is beset with unexpected difficulties, or when it seems to branch off, this way and that, in ambiguous directions; then, again and again, has been heard in

every generation from a thousand hearts, the cry for guidance and for decision, 'What shall I do, Lord?' And when at some new turn in life's journey it has become necessary to choose between conflicting claims, to do this and refuse that; and the voice of conscience is indistinctly heard, and the arguments of the natural judgment evenly balanced, so that we know not how to walk and to please God in a conjuncture felt to be critical and big with consequences; then too has the cry gone up, and never in vain from sincere and trusting hearts, into the ear of One not seen but loved, 'What shall I do, Lord? O Lord, I am oppressed: undertake for me!'

My brethren, there is one question which presses heavily, or which ought to do so, at that point of life at which many members of this congregation stand today. There is one question which concerns, not a particular act of life only, but the whole of life; a question upon the answer to which will depend, for each one of you, the occupations in which, and the circumstances amongst which, this brief but momentous being shall be used and spent. You will all perceive that I speak of what is called the choice of a profession. A 'profession' that branch of knowledge which you shall profess to have made your own; that department of human affairs which you shall profess to understand; that employment, be it what it may, for which you shall profess yourself to be qualified. And the 'choice of a profession. Considerable latitude is allowed, in these days, to all young men―entire and absolute freedom to most young men—in determining for themselves that line in which they will serve their generation