unspotted from the world," who regulate all their intercourse in society by the example left us by Christ Himself? Standards are continually set up by individuals, or churches, or society, and men are willing to adopt them if only they can quiet conscience, and comfort themselves with the concurrence of others. Thus was it early in the Christian Church till apostolic reproof and discipline prevailed. Thus was it in the Asiatic churches, till their candlestick was removed, and the ruins of their temples alone remained. Thus, too, will it be with us if there is not more spiritual life, more earnest and believing prayer, more self-denial, more holy living, more brotherly union and concord, more fearless witnessing for God. To go into society with a right aim is to be prepared to meet much that is trying, and to do much that Christ will one day own. "By the blood of the Lamb," by the help of the Holy Spirit, the heart has here already separated from what is low and base and unholy, and no contact with outward things or worldly men will influence one who is so sanctified and armed. There will be no compromise of principle, no fear of man, no weak compliance, no hesitation to confess Christ. For what purpose, he may well say, am I here, but to show my love, and to honour the name of One who loved me and gave Himself for me? "We bless Thee" should be the language, not only of our lips in church, but of our life in society. "We beseech thee," should be a remembered prayer wherever we go, "give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we may show forth Thy praise, by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days." Oh, it is easy to say this, it is another thing to live it. But surely this should be our solemn, prayerful resolve, renewed again and again whenever we go to mingle with our fellow-men, and to influence, for good or evil, the souls for whom Christ died. I can imagine nothing more sad than the entrance into mixed society of an aimless, half-vanquished Christian, with his loins ungirded and his light extinguished. On the other hand, the presence of one who lives by faith and walks in the Spirit is sure to exercise a mighty influence. A spiritual atmosphere surrounds him, and before he opens his mouth, even men will take knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus, and that he lives for Him. "Like a fair taper," writes Jeremy Taylor of the Countess of Carbery, "when she shined to all the room, yet roundabout her own station she cast a shadow and a cloud, and she shined to everybody but herself. But the perfectness of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid, and all her humility and arts of concealment made the virtues more amiable and illustrious. For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest virtues, so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world; and she, in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things, was but like one that hideth the wind and covers the ointment of her right hand." There is no place where the Christian needs to be so watchful as in society. The eyes of many rest upon him, to discover the smallest inconsistency, and to mark the least stumble. An angry look, an impatient tone, an unkind word, a timid Christ-dishonouring silence, will undo the effect of earnest pleading and eloquent speech. It will soon be known with what object he goes into society,-whether it is a worldly or a spiritual one. If it be the former, then it will be said, He is one of us. Come, let us draw him further away from his Bible and his God. If it be the latter, then there are those who will deliberately tempt him to deny his Lord, and there are others who will resent the introduction of unworldly thoughts and the presence of an unworldly man. But if the aim is right-if conformity to Christ's image has been the daily prayer-if the Holy Spirit's aid has been sought in all the difficulties and trials of life, then we shall see a marvellous influence brought to bear upon the society in which he moves. He is not alone, for the promise is his, "Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." More mightily present with him by the Spirit in the deepest recesses of his soul than tongue can tell, more helpfully with him than if he saw his Saviour by his side, and heard His voice. Brethren and friends, remember, the more holy we become, the fuller, the brighter will be our testimony. Not only for our own happiness, but for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the souls of our companions and friends, "let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord." These are, indeed, motives for holy living and faithful witnessing. What think you of Christ's words, "Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven." What animating, yet awful and soul-searching, words are these! Oh, that these truths were more fully, more constantly realised! We need them to enable us to cast off all fear of man, and to make us bold, and faithful, and consistent Christians. We need them to strengthen us for such service as angels might long for, and saints in bliss desire again to perform. We need them, that we may be to society as messengers from the King of kings, and that we may show that we are not ashamed of Christ and His gospel. Ashamed of Jesus? can it be, A mortal man ashamed of Thee? Ashamed of Jesus? Yes I may, Till then-nor is the boasting vain- PERSONAL HOLINESS AS INFLUENCING CONDUCT The HON. and REV. W. H. LYTTELTON, M.A., Hon. Canon of Worcester, Rector of Hagley, Worcester. My proper function, if I am not mistaken, as the clerical speaker on such a subject, who is to be followed by a layman so infinitely better acquainted than I can pretend to be with the practical details of the life of business in our day in England, is to state the Christian principles according to which such a life should be conducted. And in defining the precise meaning of the subject assigned to me-" Personal Holiness as Influencing Conduct in Trade," I shall, I think, be safe in saying that personal holiness consists in Christ-likeness-the spirit and mind of Christ animating and guiding a man in all his conduct; and if I must presume to select out of the great sum of the divine graces wherein consists the holiness of Christ, any that may be called specially characteristic, and that have any direct bearing upon the virtues that ought to govern the life of trade, I would say that there are two most prominent : (1) the spirit of perfect sonship towards God, which includes absolute conformity to His will, as expressed in the moral law; and (2) the spirit of perfect, invincible love and brotherhood towards all mankind of every class and order equally-the poor and the weak quite as much as the rich and great. With such a definition well agrees the saying of one of our greatest authorities on any matter concerning the spiritual life : -Archbishop Leighton, adopting an ancient classical expression defining friendship as between man and man, and applying it to friendship-if I may venture the phrase-with God Himself, or true conversion to God, says that it must be shown by "idem velle atque idem nolle," the loving and hating the same things as God does. Such a state of mind, I may add, would necessarily have this effect: it would assimilate a man's wishes to those expressed in what has been called "the divine rule of a Christian's wishes"-the Lord's prayer. For such a man would in all life wish just for those things which are there expressed; and his wishes would rise to his lips just in the order and proportion of the petitions of that divine form of words. I must endeavour, then, to show in what way holiness, in this sense, would manifest itself in the life of commerce and business as it is in this age and country of the world. And first let me affirm, for it is by no means needless to do so, that the life of commerce, that is, one which deliberately takes up the work of money-making and money-distributing as the principal occupation of life on earth, would not be necessarily inconsistent with the holiness even of a perfect Christian; that if such a life becomes in any way sinful it must be from the abuse not the proper use of its opportunities. There is a view of Christian godliness very persistently and sometimes very forcibly put forward in popular works in our days-as notably in "Joshua Davidson" and in "Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathenism," both of them works which have obtained a large circulation-which would deny this proposition, and affirm that something like communism and voluntary poverty are alone consistent with the precepts of our Lord. But I must maintain that any such view is really founded not in true Christian, but in a distinctly erroneous and Manichean theology. The question turns upon this: Did Christ our Lord come into the world to counterwork or to work in harmony with the original and, as we may call it, natural order of the world? to manifest the possible and intended glory and perfection of this world and its whole order as it was in the beginning, and as it is now, except so far as the sin of men has perverted its life, or to introduce another and different order? Without the smallest hesitation we affirm that He came to re-establish the original order of the world, to vindicate its perfect holiness and moral perfection. That order was the work and the expression of the will of His Father, with whom He was and is from eternity One; and indeed by Him Himself, as well as by the eternal Father, "all things were made," and "without Him was not anything made that was made.” Therefore we may, and ought to try to read His mind and will concerning us in the whole order of the world-so far as it is still what it was in the beginning— as well as in His written words. Christ our Lord did not come into this world and take His stand amongst us, facing all its wondrously various and manifold life, as a stranger and foreigner, if I may venture the expression, to bring into it a system of living belonging to some other and differently planned world of God's making; but it was a world of His own planning, and therefore, in its fundamental nature, perfect, glorious, fitted, as no other world could be, for bringing up human beings as children of God. He came, therefore, and His Church must by His help be ever doing the same, not to stop, but only to direct aright the whole of its life. "I am come," He said, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." He came to re-form not to new-form this divinely-made world; and surely we may, without presumption, say that one of the chief sorrows of the divine Man of Sorrows, while facing the awful sight of the world as it is, was in seeing how noble and divine a thing was here spoilt. He remembered-if I may use the expression-He bore ever in His divine consciousness what it was intended to be in the divine purpose, and in His own purpose; and it must have been infinite pain to see what man, by the use of his free will, had made of it. How then does this principle apply to that large section and division of human life of which I have to speak-the acquisition, possession, and distribution of earthly riches with which the life of commerce is occupied ? Such a view of Christian morality as I have spoken of-the communistic view-of course founds itself upon the fact that our Lord was pleased to live Himself in great poverty; and that in the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to His first disciples as His missionaries to mankind, appointed to break through and in a great degree to reverse and turn back upon their course the current religious and moral traditions of that day, He used the strongest language to teach that every man who would call himself a disciple of His, must absolutely give up the service of the world and of the things in it. But that did not surely mean that he must give up all use of them for God and in God. He comes into "the palace of the strong man armed "--to use His own awful expression—as a “stronger than he," and takes from him all his goods wherein he trusts. But He does not therefore destroy those goods, but "divides them "-redistributes them to their rightful owners, to be used by His servants for Him. So may I say, that while the Lord takes this world sternly and altogether away from His disciples as their master, He restores it as completely to them as their servant, or rather as the servant of Him whose stewards they are. He takes it away from our selfishness and self-will, but He gives it back to our love and obedience. He denies it absolutely to the "old man "in us, with his carnal lusts and self-will, but He allows it as fully to the use and service of "the new man," the Christ in us. He did not command all His disciples to live the life of missionaries; some who wished to do so He forbade, and sent them back to their homes to live there the life of ordinary men. He had rich disciples whom He did not command to become poor. Penitent Zaccheus was left with a blessing in his great house as a chief among the publicans" at Jericho, still retaining the half of his goods, after he had quite voluntarily given the other half to the poor. Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man, and apparently allowed to remain so. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary still lived in the home which He had blessed and glorified by His gracious presence with them in Bethany. "Mary, the mother of Mark," retained her house in Jerusalem, which was large enough to hold large meetings of the disciples. So must the rich men whom, later on in the history of the Church, St Paul commanded not to give up their riches altogether, but to make good and liberal use of those which they seemed called by the Divine Providence to hold. Our Lord Himself said, "Give alms of such things as ye have, and behold, all things are clean unto you." At some times, and under some circumstances as particularly, we may think, when Christians are going out as missionaries to convert the world-the Divine command is, "Turn the other cheek," and go 66 without purse or scrip;" but at another the Lord sanctioned the possession of sword as well as scrip. Such commands then are relative to providential circumstances and to the varying conditions of life on earth; the right. and wrong respecting such matters can only be taught us by the Divine Spirit, under the promise "Blessed are the pure in heart"-the single-minded servants of God,-" for they shall see God" and know His will in each case. And with reference to riches, St Jerome, as quoted by Bishop Wordsworth upon the Sermon on the Mount, said, "Christ did not say, he who has riches is condemned, but he who serves riches. The servant of riches keeps them as a servant, he who has cast off the yoke of servitude distributes them as their master." And what else is this but almost a definition of the whole business of commerce it is the holding of riches as the gift, and by the appointment, of God in Providence, and the distribution of them in His name, by a man who believes that to be his proper function in the present order of the world. It was, be it observed, before the fall, not after it, that the divine commission was given to man to "replenish the earth and subdue it ;" and it was before sin came in to mar God's perfect order, that in this wondrous globe of the earth the wonderful variety of products with which the divine creative imagination, if I may so express myself, had stored it, were so distributed in various climes and countries that exchanges must have |