good enough to point your finger at others who are indeed no better than they ought to be. "Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Falling short.-The fact is, we are none of us any better than we ought to be. Christians profess not to be good, but to be trying to be good; and even with divine help they have a hard time of it. Non-Christians profess to be good enough without Christ; and they fall a long way short of it. "We are all John Thompson's bairns." We all alike "keep the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope." That, however, is not the point. We are all inconsistent with our professions; but we are consistent with our principles and convictions; that is, with "the thoughts of our hearts." Wherefore, it behooves us to pray not so much that we may be consistent with our profession as that we may have clean hearts in the sight of God.

And just here we fall down; for "there is no difference; all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This is conviction of sin, as it is written, "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. If our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God." It matters not by what criterion we judge ourselves we find that we are not what we ought to be. If we look within, our hearts condemn us; if we look without, our friends and neighbors con

demn us; in any case we have no recourse but to throw ourselves upon the mercy of God.

The true measure.-At this point the Apostle Paul enters with this suggestion: "If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, .. have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus." This is the conclusion of the whole matter. We need Christ; we need him for the pardon of past sins; we need him for present duty; we need him for the hope of the future life. We need the mind that was in Christ Jesus so that we may be thinking his thoughts after him.

When Solomon says, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," he lays down general principles for the measurement of man; but Paul goes farther; he makes a specific application of those principles when he points to Christ, saying, "Be thou like him." Here, then, is the secret of right living, to bring ourselves into harmony with the thinking of Christ.

Do we think of

So let us examine ourselves. God as Christ thought of him? Do we think of life as Christ did; not as a handbreadth of time but as an interminable series of infinite æons for which we are preparing here and now? Do we think of the Bible as Christ thought of it, who knew and loved it, preached and practised it, and never uttered a word or syllable against it? Do

we think of the Cross as he thought of it; not as an accident befalling a martyr, but as a necessity laid upon the sinless Son of God for the deliverance of sinners from the awful grip of sin? Are these our heart thoughts? If in this manner the mind that was in Christ Jesus be also in us, so that we regard the great verities of the spiritual life as he did, and so that our thoughts are framed into great principles and convictions as his were, then our speech will "bewray" us, and our light will so shine that men, seeing our good works, shall glorify God.

WHOSE MAN AM I?

A question of ownership.-God the primal owner.Change in ownership.-A second change.-A commercial view ?-Under bonds to serve.-Is it universal ?-The one condition.

A question of ownership.-Who owns me? Nobody. I am bound, therefore, to stand on my own feet; to do my own thinking, to frame my own convictions, to follow my own conscience, and to insist that no other man shall in any manner whatsoever have the least shadow of proprietary right in me.

At the beginning of our Civil War it was proposed, in the interest of peace, to purchase the slaves of their Southern masters and liberate them. Ralph Waldo Emerson, filled with indignation at the suggestion, wrote his "Boston Hymn," in which occur these words:

"Pay ransom to the owner?

Aye, fill the bag to the brim!

Who is the owner? The slave is owner;
And always was. Pay him!"

There will probably be no difference of opinion as to the rightness of that view. So far as our fellow

men are concerned they have no right of ownership in us.

God the primal owner.-But when God comes on the premises the question assumes a different phase. By every right he owns us.

In view of this fact there never was a time when a man could properly say, "I am my own man." Adam could not say it. If God had carved an image and inscribed upon its forehead "Jehovah," his proprietary right in the product of his own handiwork would not have been more firmly established than it was in the case of Adam, of whom it is written, "Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." If proof were needed of this ownership it is forthcoming and conclusive in the fact that Adam was bound to obey the divine law.

At this point let Jeremiah speak: "The word which came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he was making a work on the wheels. And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel!" The same thought is amplified