and the first is, What is your relation to Christ? I do not say to religion as a theological system or to the Church as a religious organisation, but to Christ. Here is One who claims to be the Son of God and the Master of the world. You acknowledge that claim, in part at least, when you join in His worship. If that supreme claim is admitted, then you must define your relation to this Christ, who is alive for evermore, and by whom you will be judged. In all the closing scenes of Christ's life, we see Him, not in His relation to the multitude, but to individuals: to Caiaphas, to Herod, to Peter, to Pilate; and it is so here. In the intense light which falls on this scene, we see Christ and this young man alone; and all other figures for the time are lost in darkness. The tragedy of Gethsemane is suspended until this personal incident is settled. And sc you stand in sharp, clear, unmistakable juxtaposition with Christ; and you must determine what your future relation to Him shall be. Do you hate Him or love Him? Are you for or against Him? Is His cause your cause? The Christ of Gethsemane stands before you in the unhealed wrongs and sorrows of His world; do you mean to help or perpetuate them? Do you elect to stand with the brutal and passionate crowd that pushes Christ on to execution or with this solitary human soul who dares to follow when others flee and loves while others hate? Sooner or later that choice will be forced on you, for Christ permits no compromise. It is a question of antagonism or service, and ask yourself whether it is not

time that you boldly defined what your relation to Jesus is.

The second question is, Do you want religion? If you turn to the story of Pentecost, you will find that those who received the Holy Ghost on that memorable day were not the promiscuous multitude, but "devout men," already impregnated with religious truth. They were seekers after truth, who had followed the light they had close up. Just as steel once polarised is always susceptible to the magnetic force, so they were polarised by previous devoutness; and when the Apostles addressed them, the living current of the Divine magnetism flowed into them without a break. So you may roughly divide the mass of men into those who want religion and those who care nothing for it. The young men who laid hold on this youth did not want religion; they were the riffraff of the city, the midnight roysterers "flown with insolence and wine," to whom the whole occasion was adventure. This young

man did want religion, and was conscious of the charm of Christ. The youth whose weekday life is passed in the bar-room and the billiard saloon, and who enters the sanctuary on the seventh day in occasional obedience to troublesome custom, does not really want religion. He has no real interest in it. But the youth who loves truth and wants to find it has already prepared himself for its reception. Have you done this? Do not pretend an interest in religion you do not feel; that is adding. insincerity to callousness. Be honest with yourself, and ask whether you do really

want religion or not, for that is the question you must first settle if you would go further and define your relation to the Christ of Gethsemane.

And, lastly, let me remind you that if you would settle these solemn questions, you must dismiss all solicitation of comradeship. They are your questions; you alone can settle them. We cannot help following in imagination this young man. What became of him? Think of all he had seen and felt that night, the turbulence and stress of passion which had shaken him. It is impossible for men to forget such hours. They make too deep and indelible an impression on their lives. The coward cannot forget that once he was almost heroic, or the cynic that he was once almost religious. The man who has been as near Christ as this young man was, and then forsaken Him, must bear the scar of his treachery, the mortifying memory of his infirmity of purpose, through all his life. Can you not picture this youth as he reaches home that night, breathless, sobbing, unstrung by the vehement excitement he had suffered? What a night for any man to pass through! How the face of Christ would haunt him, with its reproachful friendliness and forlorn pathos of appeal! Can we not distinguish this youth in the crowd around the judgment-hall of Pilate, or standing bowed in fruitless shame in the darkness of Calvary, with the loud dying cry of Jesus ringing in his ears? Whatever future life was his, of this at least we may be pretty sure: that night in Gethsemane would always stand out terribly clear and luminous as

the one supreme event, the crowning moral opportunity, of his life. And he lost it. He lost that which never could be his again. For the great lesson of moral impulse is that it is so quick to come and go, that we must needs be alert to use it, and dare not trifle with it. "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way," says the Psalmist, for all too soon the Son passes from our sight, and the impulse we restrained has no other opportunity of vindication. And once more, as the torchlight fades away, and silence once again possesses the garden where Jesus sorrowed, that Divine voice comes to us from the broadening distance, "Will ye also be My disciples?" "Will ye also go away?"

IV.

THE TESTIMONY OF FACT.

"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man that was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it."—Acts iv. 13, 14. 4

HE force of this passage is that it is the testimony

THE

of enemies to the effects of Christianity, and such testimony is the most valuable form of evidence. Through all the long line of Christian history this testimony has been repeated. It is hardly too much to say that it is beneath the dignity of Christianity to publish apologetics or subtle arguments why it should be permitted to exist; it exists because it must, because it cannot help existing, and because it is justified by its results. From the moment when the darkness rolled away from Calvary an infinite light has filled the world, and it has been daybreak everywhere. Men have instinctively realised the presence of a new force in the world, and they have been forced to respect it. Like light, it has grown silently; but, like light, it has also been invincible: it has come with a potent supremacy, subduing men as the light subdues the darkness when at the break of day it beats the darkness into