Testament believed that Jesus Himself had acquired a dignity by means of the cross which He could not have had without it.

But this is not the whole of the matter. The spirit that saves is also the spirit that suffers, or is willing to suffer, that souls may be freed from their bondage. Without this it has no power. The spirit of holiness with power is the spirit of self-sacrifice too. It is so always and everywhere. This is the truth that underlies all the substitutionary theories of the Atonement. We belong to one another so closely that no life can rightly articulate the perfect life if it withholds itself in any degree from the common life; and wherever and whenever an individual life makes itself a free gift to the common life, some measure of suffering must follow. The common life of humanity is in bonds from which only the Christspirit can set it free; and wherever you see that Christ-spirit at work you see the cross willingly and cheerfully borne. This was brought home to me in a vivid and original fashion on Thursday morning last. Immediately after the service, in which I had been speaking on an aspect of this particular theme, a friend of mine, a prominent business man in the City, came into the vestry and told me the following experience of his own. He happened to be driving past that grim erection, the new Old Bailey, as it is called. Happening to glance up at the building, his attention was arrested by the colossal figure of Justice which stands there. Justice is repre

sented, as usual, as a blindfolded female holding the even scales in one hand and in the other an uplifted sword ready to strike. "Ah," thought my friend to himself, apostrophising the figure over the gate, "you may wield your sword, Madam Justice; you may strike down and destroy the poor wretches who fight against organised society; but there are some things you cannot do after all: the scales of justice and the sword of chastisement will not save the world." A few minutes afterwards he was whirled round the corner of Ludgate Hill and came in full view of the great gold cross of St. Paul's rising high above the hurrying, toiling masses, and the sun of heaven gleaming upon it. With sudden and heartfelt emotion my friend exclaimed, "There, that is what is saving the world; not the spirit that inflicts pain, but the spirit that willingly accepts pain in order to lift up and heal and unite mankind in loving fellowship with God." My friend is a true-hearted, lovable, humble-spirited man. He had just been telling me a moment before that, although he felt the power of the wider Gospel that is being preached in the name of Jesus to-day, he felt unequal to stating it himself. When he had finished telling me of this particular incident — the contrast between the sword of the Criminal Court and the great gold cross of the Cathedral I turned to him and said, "I do not know whether you are aware of the fact, but there is something of the poet in you." He looked amused. "Well,"

I added, "go and tell that story to your friends exactly as you have told it to me, and see whether you cannot make them understand the wider Gospel. You have got the whole thing in a nutshell. The spirit of love must show itself as a spirit of sacrifice in a needy world—that is, the spirit of holiness, and nothing less than that ever is worthy to be called holy. The spirit of holiness is, blessed be God, also the spirit of power." "Well," replied my friend, with a smile, as he passed out, "you may be right, but certainly no one has ever accused me of being a poet before." I think he is better than that: he is a saviour, a Christ man; he knows the meaning of the cross. But, my friends, do you? I think you do. I do not suppose that there are more than half a dozen theologians among my hearers, but there are men and women in the front rank of the fighting line, people who are trying hard to do something that is worth doing, something that is higher than their own self-interest. You have come in here with the smarts of yesterday's conflicts upon you, the memory of yesterday's troubles in mind and heart. Listen to what I have to say about this principle in relation to your own individual experience. You know perfectly well that St. Paul was right, and that Jesus was right, and that what Jesus stood for is that which will save the world, and nothing else ever will. Do not suffer anything or anybody to limit your understanding of this glorious truth. If you will allow it to possess and

govern your lives, it will deliver you from everything that is base and sordid in thought and word and deed; it will make you love and reverence Jesus more and more for having shown you what it means. The expression of the Spirit of Christ in you may lead you to a Calvary perhaps to many Calvaries, one after the other; but Calvary does not matter, it is only the narrow gateway through which the soul passes into freer air and larger power; it is the prelude to the resurrection, the rising up, the issuing forth, the going forward of the Divine spirit in man. This truth will teach you more and more of the closeness of your kinship with your brethren of this world; it will show you that no noble life ever has been lived or can be lived to itself alone. It will enable you to realise that all life is one, and that the life of power and joy is the life that comes nearest even on earth to the realisation of this great truth. It will make you happier even in the humble service which is rendered at home. It will make you wiser and stronger amid the monotony and drudgery of the market-place and the business house. You will never cease to be a son of God, however humble and obscure your task may be. You can realise all the time that the life that does not fear the cross is the life that gains in power by the cross, the life that rises in victory beyond the cross "declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection of the dead."

THE EVER-PRESENT CHRIST

Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. MATT. XXViii. 20.

THIS much-quoted sentence has had, and I suppose always will have, a considerable value for Christian experience. It is the declaration of a truth upon which the very life of Christianity depends. All great religions reverence the memory of their founders and treasure their words, but Christianity does something more than this: it declares itself to be immediately dependent upon the spiritual presence of its Lord, who continues to impact Himself upon the world through His followers. If this be true, no more important truth has ever been preached. Our text is an explicit declaration of it, and it behoves us therefore to make quite sure of its meaning before appropriating its message.

You may have observed that in the marginal translation in the Revised Version of the New Testament the passage is rendered, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age." Now there are several things taken for granted in this way of putting the case, which are quite important in their way and require an examination.