brethren, and the merciful indulgence of our Lord. We have enough to do with our own faults, instead of looking at our brethren's. Yet we all alike need a continual forgiveness. We all need the mutual help and blessing that comes to sinful but sincere children of one heavenly family, travelling together to the many mansions of the one celestial home, from common prayer and praise. As you kneel side by side in the house of prayer, sometimes quietly think and tenderly pray for those near you-and without telling them. No help in all this world is like the help that comes by intercession. Give what you would receive. Then mending our nets has, like everything else, a subtle snare with it. It may breed too much introspection, a morbid brooding over tiny faults, a religious egotism, even a spiritual self-complacency. We should tread upon all these possible thorns with a firm tread; we should think more of our Saviour than of our sinfulness, of His righteousness than of our own unworthiness, of what He has done for us than of what we can do for Him, of His unchanging love rather than of our own poor effort after it. We walk by faith, not by sight. We are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God. Then there is a sort of comfort in the thought that, as nets will wear out, so, in the nature of things, these spirits of ours need repair and restoration through the very conditions of their existence. Christ, so far from feeling these men to be but poor and unskilful at their trade, and so unsuited for the work to which He was calling them, summoned them as readily as He summoned Peter and Andrew a few yards off, casting their nets into the sea; thought no scorn of them because they were not actually at their trade. He will observe and approve and bless us for mending our nets. He will help us to mend them; show us where they need more mending than we had thought of; sustain us when our patience fails, cheer us when our joy is ebbing. For oh, dear souls, what He most desires for us is that we should be partakers of His holiness; and to be saintly means a long and steep and thorny, though even more blessed, climb up the hill, on the top of which we too shall be transfigured, just so far and so completely as we followed Him closely here. Lastly, we mend our nets that we may use them again, perhaps in even better and nobler work than before. "Follow Me," said Jesus, "and I will make you fishers of men." Every sin conquered, every habit controlled, every virtue practised, every cross carried, means more goodness, and therefore more usefulness. Goodness will live and triumph when intellect and knowledge, wealth and genius, are utterly forgotten. There is no limit to our goodness but such as our own unbelief and indevoutness are pleased to put in the way of it. Mending our nets may be humble. work, but it is useful work, and God gives His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. TREASURES IN HEAVEN. Preached in Winchester Cathedral, Ash Wednesday, 1892. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."-MATT. vi. 20. IT has been observed of our Lord, with as much acumen as exactness, that it was His rule, in His public teaching, not so much to stir emotion as to compel reflection, and that He always aimed at reaching the conscience before winning the heart. In another way of putting it, He carefully avoided, what some of our modern revivalists apparently much desiderate, any disturbance of the equilibrium of the moral sense by artificial or premature stimulating of the feelings. It is, indeed, easy enough, and, alas! perilous, to stir tears or to excite a superficial repentance; but when the reaction follows-and there is sure to be a reaction-the soul, with no principles to sustain it, and no knowledge to buttress its weakness, is apt to succumb easily to a fatal coldness; and so the last state of that man is worse than the first. The text is a good instance of Christ's method in persuading men into the higher life of faith and sacrifice. He has been discoursing on the three primary constituents of religion-almsgiving, worship, fasting. He does not, indeed, |