in proportion as he ceases to be a sinner does he become a saviour. This is precisely what the writer means by this text of ours, and he could not have told us anything more beautiful. To walk in the light of that truth gives the spirit of Christ full opportunity within us, and the blood of Christ, that is, the forth-given life of Christ, the life of God in every man, cleanseth us from all sin.

But, some one will say: You have not told us everything. Think of the terrible condition of those who are without God and without. hope in this world. Think of the broken-hearted man with a guilty past from which he cannot get free. Think of the sinner whose burden of sin is so great that he feels he can never get rid of it in this world or the next, and that atonement can never be made. What have you to say about a moral problem such as this?

Well, I have nothing different to say from what has already been said, but that is sufficient. The truth thus declared in my text will cover every moral problem that can possibly arise. I think it would be true to say that comparatively few of the men and women before me feel the burden of personal guilt to be so awful that they cannot expect forgiveness from God without some drastic outside action on the part of a redeemer, and yet every one of you would admit and deplore the presence and the power of sin in your lives. But even if it were so, even if there were some man here to whom life is now a black midnight because of some wicked deed or

course of action in the past, the memory of which is an unremitting torture, the same principle would hold good. The blood of Christ will cleanse you from that foul sore if you walk in the light. But you must walk in the light. If you have anything hidden away which you ought to acknowledge, and dare not acknowledge for fear of painful consequences, you are not walking in the light. Bring that thing out of the darkness and show it to God. If you have injured any one, do your best to make restitution, for that is what this writer means by doing the truth. You cannot make full restitution no one ever can; but you can put away coward fear and do your best, and God never asks more than that. Come out into the light. Have nothing in your life that you dare not face out. Be true at all costs, and see what follows. You will feel the peace of heaven enter your storm-tossed soul. You will not be left to fight your battle alone, nor will you feel that you are. All the love in the universe will come to your help, and will break one by one the chains that bind you to your evil past. There is nothing which needs to be done for you which it cannot do. It will conform you to the likeness of Jesus by separating you from sin and uniting you to eternal love. Remember that when a man has become so changed in spirit and outlook upon life as to be utterly incapable of a sin of which he was formerly guilty, he is now as though that sin had never been committed. He is cleansed

from the stain of it. He is a new man. Henceforth his greatest joy is to be a living sacrifice to the ideal of Jesus. He has escaped from selfhood into the life of God.

There is a class of sins to which, of course, it is not so easy to apply this principle, but it holds good all the same if you only give it time enough. And no lesser principle will do anything at all to help in such a case. I mean, say, where a man has blighted and ruined another life than his own, and cannot overtake the mischief he has done. In such a case repentance, if genuine, would mean bitter and unavailing sorrow. If it did not, there would be something sadly wrong with the quality of the repentance. I verily believe there are some people in the world who hardly dare to repent of their wrongdoing, because they know that other lives which they have blackened still remain in sin. Did any of you grown men ever lead a weak lad wrong? Did you ever teach foulness to a pure heart? Did you ever introduce an innocent being to scenes where he or she was not strong enough to stand for purity and truth? Then I do not envy you your state of mind when you think of your record. You have a good deal to put right besides your own salvation. In fact, there is no salvation for you which has no relation to these victims of your evil days. But, for your comfort, let me tell you that the same thing applies to salvation in general. If you are truly penitent you will find that it is your

business to seek and to save that which is lost, here and hereafter, and all the love of Christ in the spiritual universe is with you in the task. That is what God wants you to do, and you must never mind how much it costs you to do it. It will demand your very life-blood, and you must not withhold it. The blood of Christ will be shed in you and through you for the sins of the world.

Go, all of you, to your divinely appointed task of manifesting the love of God to a perishing world. Do not suffer anything to keep you back from it. If you are a sinner, that is the best way to get free from your sin. And the more you can rise above sin the more you will go on pouring forth that sacrificial, wonder-working life, just as the mounting sun of springtime, the light of heaven, becomes the life of every leaf and flower that struggles for expression upon earth.

He whose heart is full of tenderness and truth,
Who loves mankind more than he loves himself,
And cannot find room in his heart for hate,
May be another Christ. We all may be
The saviours of the world, if we believe

In the Divinity that dwells in us
And worship it, and nail our grosser selves,
Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims,
Upon the Cross. Who giveth love to all
Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns,
And lends new courage to each fainting heart,
And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad,
He too is a redeemer, son of God.

OUR MORAL LIMITATIONS

"Take away the filthy garments from him."—ZECH. iii. 4.

THIS passage was written about 520 years before Christ was born. It refers to a time of new but not very hopeful beginnings in the later history of the Jews. We need to know a little about that period before we can rightly understand and enter into the spirit of the text. There is no more interesting book in the world than the Old Testament, even from the human point of view; but it has suffered 'greatly at the hands of its interpreters. I wish it could be more intelligently handled even to-day by some of its most devoted readers. They fail to take account of the historic perspective, and therefore they fail to appreciate a great part of its moral and religious value. For instance, this book of Zechariah becomes illuminating and suggestive as soon as we take account of the motive which impelled the author to write. Some of you, especially the younger men, may regard this as a dry book. So it is, if you are unable to place yourself in the author's circumstances and look out upon life as it were from his eyes. If you can do that you will find that the book is anything but dry. Suppose we try to do it now.