fellowship of all holy ministering spirits. Lost to Him, for He gets not the glory from it, the service which His love would appoint; lost to our fellows, for they are not blessed as they should be; lost to this world-lost! lost! Oh! what can that word import when applied to the soul? thinking, an immortal being lost!

A soul lost! A

Tell us, O thou

radiant Son of light, thou Gabriel, standing in the presence of God, tell us what that can be,-a man, a woman, gone down from that heaven of thine, honour lost, integrity lost, peace lost, strength lost, manhood lost, womanhood lost, God lost, eternity lost, ever and ever-lost! Tell us, make us to understand, O thou blessed and glorious archangel! Nay, dost thou only weep? Through the light in which thou art covered, I seem to see the shining of the tears with which thy "other larger eyes" are dimmed. These tears surely are the answer to our cry-the witness for that agony of Heaven which the Son of man poured forth in His pleading, "What can it profit though the whole world be gained, if the soul is lost?"

Mysterious being; seat and scene of transactions which belong to eternity; battle-ground, hidden from gaze of man except so far as the tell-tale face and nerves are its index, where the shock of great armies is felt and campaigns are prolonged, and now

the right is triumphant and now the wrong. Oh, my reader, put not from thee the question, "Is it well?" Take nothing for granted when such tremendous issues are at stake. Who is thy soulcaptain-the presence that is ruling and fighting for entire supremacy in thee?

III.

Christ.

"Who art thou, Lord?.... Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"-Aors ix. 5.6.

AUL, prostrate and bewildered, asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" Has not the question thus put been the question of all the

centuries since ? Is it not, more than ever, the problem which reveals the thoughts of the hearts of men ? There is not one of my readers, whatever his views on many subjects may be, who is not brought face to face with it. He finds it in book, journal, newspaper; it confronts the human mind; even those who think that they have done with it cannot escape from it; it follows them, sometimes torments them. I can scarcely suppose any person of moral earnestness dismissing the inquiry as one with which he will not be concerned, although I can suppose that to some the answer may be shrouded in painful darkness. Those to whom I speak will forgive me if I ask, "What think ye of Christ ?"

I have said that the issue raised is one almost forced on our attention. Christ is not dead. We cannot say that He was, but is not. Even those whose Life of Jesus stops at the entombment; to whom He is the Risen only in the sense that the charm of His character and the power of His teaching have given a new direction to thought, have supplied a new ideal for the love and reverence of the soul, have become the foremost factor in the progress of mankind; are forced to confess, although not in the orthodox form of the confession, that He who was dead is alive for evermore. For, indeed, there is one fact to which none can altogether close their eyes. That fact is Christendom, or the Church,-a Society which includes many forms of government, many symbols of belief, but which presents a marvellous unity through all diversities in worship, creed, and discipline. All in its membership bow at the name of Jesus; all observe two sacraments which are held to be the seal of fellowship with Him and reception of grace through Him; all recognize the obligation to be holy even as He is holy; all say one to another, "Because He lives, we live also." There is no gainsaying the witness for Christ, as a Priest after the power of an endless life, which is borne by this world-wide, all-ages-embracing organization.

We can freely admit all that is charged

against it; we can deplore the schisms and hatreds which too often mar its beauty; we can acknowledge with shame the inconsistencies of Christians (alas! do we not feel our own?); we can concede all that is asserted as to the corruptions which are to be traced in all churches: but the more we are reminded of the earthen vessel which holds the treasure, the more we are taught that the excellency of the power must be of God. What is the history of the Church? It takes us back to the day when the eleven apostles gazed into the heaven whither they believed their Lord had been taken out of their sight, and when, having thus gazed, they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, worshipping and praising God. It bids us remember that, ten days afterwards, three thousand people, many of whom had joined in the demand for Jesus' death, were seized by remorse the most sharp and poignant, and that beneath the force of St. Peter's teaching they renounced their past life and joined themselves to the company of the apostles. It presents this as the early morning of Christianity. Apparently the feeblest of all feeblenesses, it went forth from that Pentecost hour and scene God's missionary to a world full of sickness and confusion. It tamed the barbarian, elevated the slave, raised woman to the place of honour, proclaimed the equality of all in the sight of