not merely an idea, and the Church of England is to us directly the Church of God, not, o course, exclusively, not in any way exclusively. We should no more think of denying to the several sects among us the share in Christ that they claim, and that it is His, not ours, to warrant or repudiate, than we should to foreign Churches; but for all that, to us of the Church and clergy, the contact of the Church of England is the direct contact of the Church of God. And it is by and through her order to-day that you become Christ's servants and ministers of her work.

Of course you may exaggerate the importance of this, but you are far more likely at the present day, for several reasons, to think too little of it than to think too much; a spurious liberalism on the one side, a disproportioned idea and arbitrary assumption of catholicity on the other; orthodox intolerance or cosmopolitan laxity; a vain pretension to free thought, an arrogant exercise of self-will, the disruptive force of partisanship, the miserable affectation of conceited isolation, the passion for being abreast with every new fancy, the coxcombry of sceptic or agnostic reserve of judgment; every snare that the pride of intellect, or the indolence that calls itself humility to save itself the exertion of judgment, or the in

discriminate devotion to particular leaders, or particular modes of work, or particular sides of the truth; a long array of dangers and snares, within the heart and without, in the going out and coming in. Against all these, or against any of them, I do not say that a thorough realisation of your position as ministers of the Church of England can be a sole or sufficient safeguard; but I warn you that it is a necessary part of your safe keeping--a necessary, indispensably necessary, matter to be faced, and continually faced, and to be made a part of your limiting and quickening convictions. And rightly conceived, rightly interpreted, it contains all the rest, or is a key to all the rest; if only you will not be content with the key, but enter in and make real to yourself all that is contained in the treasure.

Remember then that, as officers of a wellorganised body, you have guidance to accept for yourselves as well as to be guides to others. The Bible is entrusted to you, not to construct theories from, or to concoct conundrums, but to be the treasury of preaching definite doctrine which you pledge yourselves to as believers and maintainers; your pastoral charge is confided to you, not for you to make personal partisans, or to build up a personal success, but to be guided into

the following of Christ; your clerical character is given you, not for your own advancement in the world, but for Christ's service in the Church; your offer of service is accepted in the sense in which it ought to be offered, and God give you grace to make the offering in such way as He can accept. Never let any thing, person, idea, influence, jealousy, grudge, or quip or quirk come between you and your people. Never let any thing, person, idea, influence, ambition, desire, lust, world, or wife, or children, or self, or even the flock of Christ Himself come between you and your Lord. Be humble for yourself, but never humiliate Him; be true, never pretending to know what you do not know, or to experiences that you have never felt, or to a character that you do not realise, or to a position about which you are yourselves uncertain. The people you live among will see through your unreality; being far more sharp-sighted as to the evil and false than as to the good and true, as alas we all are, until we have won and worn the more excellent, the most excellent gift. But work, try, and pray to be real, to make your life and work real too, in the full realisation of your calling, your character, your relation to Jesus and your relation to your own people. Keep yourselves pure, for His sake, and theirs, and your own. Keep yourselves

employed, even if it were only to keep yourselves pure; but much work lies before you. Never give up the attempt to make yourselves, by reading and study of the Scripture, fitter teachers as well as clearer seers of the mind, and more earnest sharers in the longing and travail of Christ. God, who has called us to this, the most important of all works that He entrusts to the hands of men, make you strong and perfect to save your own souls in the doing of His good pleasure.

THE WORLD

I

Therefore, seeing we have received this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.-2 COR. iv. I, 2.

THE Church of God stands before and against the world, as the pillar and ground of the truth, the House of God, the Church of the living God; and every minister of the Church of the living God stands before his fellow-men as claiming to be a representative of the truth and a preacher of the truth, and as, by manifestation of the truth, commending himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Not that every man's conscience can possibly be a competent judge or test of the truth that is manifested before him, but that he is capable of apprehending the lesson and testing the cogency of the appeal, unless he be one to whom the Gospel is hid, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe not.