your people the less you will be loved. After all, it is not for yourself to be loved that you do your work; it is for Him to win it, and He will bide His time. It is in them that we are to work our work for Him; never to weary of their tiresome ways, never to be sick of their commonplace characters, never to be provoked by their sullen hostility or by their insincere complaisance. The work has to be done, the prayer to be prayed, the sorrow to be borne, the sins to be grieved over, the way to be smoothed; yes, and the conscience to be roused; yes, and everything to be endured for those for whom He endured to die. Whose sorrow was ever like to His? And our love, God grant the spirit to us all, that suffereth long and is kind, that seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; aye, and fears nothing to be done or to be borne for Him and His. Charity never faileth; work.

patience hath her perfect

Last, the spirit of soberness, or of a sound mind, or of self-discipline, the spirit that trains to temperance and self-command and self-restraint and self-sacrifice; for the word which St. Paul

uses is one of wide application and of a special connotation, a combination of moral and intellectual as well as of spiritual qualities. It is the habit of temperance in the widest meaning, the balance of the mind and the heart, of the affections and the judgment, purity of life keeping the eyes of the reason and understanding clear and open a sound heart and a sound judgment. Such a gift is surely the needful complement of the other two of the power that can attempt all things in faith in Him who has given the word, of the love that can endure all things for the sake of those to whom He has sent us; the clear head and sound heart, that will give practical application to the power and the love, sound heart and clear head that will keep self under command, and with self all the fears that self-love may inspire, all the alarms that self-esteem and self-conceit and self-engrossment may raise to turn the energies of the minister of God away from His work for his people. There is much, indeed, in the gift of a sound mind, a calm spirit, a sympathetic, considerate spirit, a spirit not liable to false enthusiasm, but ready for any real work; a spirit that does not waste its energy, but never begrudges exertion; a spirit that by doing the Master's will enters more and more daily into the mind of the

Master, learning the reasons of His commands by obeying them, justifying the wisdom as it shines more and more clearly through finished service, seeing the new openings for duty that the doing of duty reveals to him to whom the work of duty is the work also of power and of love.

Beloved, surely the lesson is a lesson for these days and for this day, and to you. Here is the gift; here is the risk. Not, it may be, to be ashamed of the testimony, the temptation which St. Paul cautions his disciple against; of that we fondly think that even in these days we have little apprehension. We, we think, scarcely need to be told not to be ashamed of Christ; but the fearfulness that lays one man open to that sort of temptation lays a thousand open to the other temptations of cowardice, faithless discouragement, heartless and spiritless and loveless perfunctoriness in the discharge of a duty which should employ heart, spirit, intellect, mind, soul, and strength. Pray, my brother, and you, too, who owe your prayers for him who is now entering on the fulness of his vocation as a minister, pray you for him, that God will abundantly pour on him the gifts that are needed: power and love and self-discipline; to meet and counteract the fear of man, and the fear for self, and the fear for the future, and the

fear of anxiety, the fear of alarmism, the fear of a faithless heart which cannot trust Him who has promised. God does not give the spirit of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind, in a clean and free and true heart. So may it be.

in Him.

So shall it be with you who trust

LET NO MAN DESPISE THEE

Let no man despise thee.-TITUS ii. 15.

But be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.—I TIM. iv. 12.

THE servant is not above his Master, nor the disciple above his Lord; it is enough for the servant that he be as his Master. And his Master was despised and rejected of men; and He who was so despised and rejected tells His disciples that they must expect the same: If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me, and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me. There are circumstances in which such despising is a matter of blessing: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake." Falsely, mind you, and for My sake. Those two saving words take us out of the dilemma into which the apostle's words in the text which I have chosen seem to be likely to lead us: "Let no man despise thee."