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of the doctrine your obedience will be repaid, and the wisdom of God will make you wise unto salvation.

THE PROVINCE OF THE HEART.

And remember, finally, two things. First, we are not intellect only; the heart has to be reckoned with. "The heart has reasons which the reason does not know of," says Pascal. Faith in unseen things and things unproven to the perception is a daily necessity; we do not feel the earth move, but we believe it: we never saw the other side of the world, but we send our messages to its farthest boundary without misgiving. And every day, imprisoned as we are in a world of law, we triumph over law, just as every tree and flower defeats the law of gravitation when it forces its way upward to the light and seeks a wider world.

"If e'er when faith had fallen asleep

I heard a voice, 'Believe no more,'
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the godless deep,

A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And, like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up, and answered, 'I have felt.'"

Yes, we have felt. When every fact has been against us, a Divine intuition in the heart has buoyed us up and given us hope. Beside the beds of the dying all the facts have seemed against us; but we have felt that all the virtue and the patience of that closing life could not be lost, but must survive somewhere, if only in obedience in that law of economy which permits no waste in nature. Beside the graves of great men we have felt

that all those powers, sharpened to the finest uses, could not be utterly destroyed; and it has been impossible for us to think of the putrefaction of the grave: we have perceived the entrance on immortality. And when the great earth has been dumb to our inquiry and the stars deaf to our prayer, we have still told ourselves our hopes should not be disinherited, nor our prayer be mocked. Do you remember that word of Paul's, "With the heart a man believeth unto righteousness"? Oh, well do I remember how like a flash of light that verse illumined my soul one day when all was at its darkest for me. And then I saw what it all meant that God did not ask me to believe with my intellect at all, but to trust Him with my heart. From that hour the world has brightened in me, for I know now that I have found God.

Often and often now I cannot believe with the intellect, but I can with the heart. And so may you. Come, doubts and all, to the blessed Lord, and let your hearts go out to Him, and He shall give you rest unto your soul.

THE CROSS OF MYSTERY.

And the other thing I would ask you to remember is that Christ does not profess to have told us everything, or cleared up every human mystery. From vast tracts of thought He has not lifted the curtain; they lie unilluminated, or revealed only by some vivid flash of light which makes the darkness visible. And when Jesus tells me to take up the cross and follow Him, He does not mean only the sacrifice of ease, or wealth, or

importunate desire; He means also that cross of unanswered mystery which He lays upon my intellect, and which is not the least heavy of the many crosses He gives the children of men to bear. But He has told me enough. He has revealed the infinite and compassionate Fatherhood of God. He has given me an absolutely clear and infallible code of conduct. He has shown me, not merely my duty, but how it may be done, and has promised me a Divine influx of strength, whereby I may accomplish it. He is alive for evermore, and stands even now close to each of us, as He did to Thomas in the very moment when his heart was sick with doubt. And what happened then? Thomas had demanded proofs, and now he had them; but he did not use them. He thrust no hand into His side or finger into the wound. He did not ask whether this solemn Presence was the vision of hysteric ecstasy or hallucination. All he knew was that he saw his Master, and the warmth of that living Presence streamed round him, and his heart broke out in the rapturous cry: "My Lord and my God!" Brother, Christ is now breathing on thee the breath of life. Dismiss the voices of the intellect, and let the heart speak. Believe with all thine heart, and thou shalt enter into peace. O that to any doubters who may read these words, and to my unknown correspondent, there may come the dawn of faith, heralded by that heart-piercing cry of Thomas called Didymus, "My Lord and my God!"

III.

ON IMPULSE AND OPPORTUNITY.

"And there followed Him a certain young man having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him and he left the linen cloth, and fled from 'them naked."MARK xiv. 51, 52.

THIS

HIS incident is related by St. Mark only, and is one of those undesigned touches of realism which gives dramatic completeness to the scene. Christ is in Gethsemane; it is the hour and power of darkness. He knows now that nothing but the Cross awaits Him, that He has spoken to a wicked and gainsaying people, and that the bitter cup of defeat must be drunk to the last dregs. He knows also-and that is the most poignant thought of all-that His own disciples have had no real or stable faith in Him, and that His own familiar friend has lifted up his heel against Him. When Christ stepped out of the supper-chamber and passed through the moonlit olive-gardens, singing a psalm with His disciples, it was in truth a requiem for great hopes, a dirge for ended faith and confidence.

Is there any bitterer trouble to a great soul that has toiled for others than to feel that its toil has been wasted, to know that its heroic love is answered by indifference, its self-sacrifice by hostility and contempt? Can God

call any human spirit to a more tragic Gethsemane than this? It was that and more-the crushing sense of human sin, the burden of the wrong of otherswhich Christ felt in that hour when the torches of His foes flashed through the shadows of the olivegardens and the trampling of innumerable feet fell upon His ear. The whole city was aroused; and in the tumult and excitement, probably the youth mentioned in this text sprang from his bed and ran toward the garden. Who he was and what he knew of Christ it is impossible to say; but it is not unnatural to suppose that he may often have seen Christ, and heard Him, and may possibly have loved Him. He may have been one of those young men who had questioned Christ about eternal life, and whom Jesus had loved for the integrity and simplicity of his spirit. That he was no stranger to Christ we may infer from the fact that he follows Him when others flee; and that he must have felt for Christ some passionate impulse of love or curiosity we may judge from the fact that he leaps from his bed and runs nearly naked to the garden at the first sound of approaching danger. Did he hope to defend Christ? Did he hope to warn Him or to save Him? We cannot tell, but this at least is clear: here is a young man moved by a generous and noble impulse toward Jesus, who has a supreme chance of proving his love and courage in the hour of Christ's deadliest peril, but who loses the golden opportunity, and in the confusion of the arrest forsakes Jesus, as did all the others.

There, then, the history terminates; and nothing

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