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Sufferings and tribulations instead of being discouragements and making life not worth living, are seen to be the coronation of life. For all our struggles are but preparations for something higher, and that higher thing is of the nature of what is already achieved in us. The child's lungs are prepared to breathe the air before it is brought into the world. The doing of a duty is the preparation for doing the next harder and higher duty. So in childhood we learn to discipline sense, that in youth the power of the senses be not too strong. In youth by selfrestraint we store up vigour for middle life. In middle age we obtain detachment from the uses of this life, by seeing how imperfect are its results; and learn patiently to abide the Lord's time, and be willing to work in His way; not always seeing results, but sure that He is accomplishing His plan. To say "Thou wilt perform the cause I have in hand," is the achievement of middle life. And then comes the rest of age; the patient waiting for the change into a different sphere of work-into a greater mystery. The struggle with the tares is well-nigh over; the grain of God has preserved the divine type, however imperfectly, and "He gathers the wheat in His barn."

Before we go to our rest, we would bow our knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth

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is named that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His spirit in our inner man that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Grant us this night refreshing sleep, and on the morrow such constant abiding within us of the Word of God vouchsafed to us this day, as may lead us to do all things, whatsoever we do, in the name of the Lord Jesus.

THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE

Collect.

EPIPHANY

O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of eternal life; grant us, we beseech Thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves, even as He is pure; that, when He shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto Him in His eternal and glorious kingdom; where with Thee, O Father, and Thee, O Holy Ghost, He liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. ΑΜΕΝ.

Epistle. 1 St. John iii. 1.

Gospel. St. Matt. xxiv. 23.

On this Sunday we are called to realize the individuality of every soul, while we still enter the vision of the future of the whole human race.

Called by love to be a son of God and heir of eternal life, the soul is purified from evil by this divine hope; we know not what we shall be, but we know that when Christ shall appear in glory they that are like Him shall be gathered together, the harvest of time, the fruit of evolution, the final perseverance of the saints.

Among the individualists Calvin has done much in calling the Church back to a neglected view of truth. Brunetaire says of him, "Calvin

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intellectualized, he aristocratized, he individualized the religion of Christ; and for his great services should almost be forgiven his heresies." Calvin taught that we are not saved as members of a corporation though we call it the Church; the regeneration is of the individual soul; I must be born again; justification comes by my faith, not by union with a visible body, or by the denial of natural instincts; vital union with God comes only from devout personal surrender.

Huxley, materialist as he was, is constrained to say the world is more advanced by great men than by great discoveries in science, or achievements in art. Such men are the aristocrats of humanity, the elect, the predestined, whose final perseverance must be. There will never be a dead level of humanity, morally or spiritually, but always an election of grace.

Catholic thought includes the individual but transcends him.

Kidd, in his book, "Western Civilization," calls the subjection of the present to the future of the race "Projected Efficiency." Every development of national life, says he, has left its residuum for the growth of humanity. In so far then as present things minister to true principles, they are to be accepted. They are not to be promoted simply for utilitarian purposes for the establishment of a perfect present, but in transition to something better. Aim at the highest, even at risk of present pain, and, it may be, of seeming failure. Don't be afraid of Quixotism, so

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called. Sancho Panza's nag must always ride behind Rosinante. For loftiness and nobility of purpose must outrank schemes for worldly gain, even unto the end. The constitution of the world so requires it. It is God's world-"groaning and travailing together in pain—waiting its redemption."

What a call this is to holy living! To be members incorporate in the Church, which is precious in His sight, honourable, loved by the Most High. "Therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life." How much has been given in the past to preserve the Church's purity, its perpetual reformation! The civilization of the Roman world for its outward establishment; the blood of nation after nation to make way for its spread; the overturnings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for its quickening; and always the lives of its devoted servants, missionaries, and martyrs.

Shall we despise our heritage? Shall we mourn over our day as if it were not the heir of the days of pain and anguish that are past? As if it were not also a prisoner of hope, struggling towards the brighter day, the fuller liberty, the manifestation of the sons of God!

Oh, Lord and Giver of life, bowed down with a sense of our own insufficiency, our earthliness, the power of our passions, the enticements of the world-we come to Thee.