has to-day given glad or penitent response to the truth and purity of another, you have seen the faith that works by love, you have seen the manifestation of the life eternal. Do not, I beseech you, make light of this. We know that God loves the world simply because we see that love expressed in human self-devotion and brotherly kindness. If you do not find it there you will find it nowhere. This is verifiable, unescapable fact, which outweighs all the theorising in the world. It makes life sacred and beautiful, and illumines it with a Divine radiance. "God so loved the world" I believe it when I hear a broken-hearted mother praying for a prodigal. "He gave His only-begotten Son" I believe it when I come across a surrendered life, a Divine activity like that of the late Dr. Barnardo, inspired by the spirit of Jesus. "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish" how could they? This is faith in love, and love is the ultimate reality of all existence. "But have eternal life" - Ah yes; "this is life eternal: that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

Some one made a most illuminating remark to me the other day. It was this: Most of the blunders of Christian theology have been due to the fact that no woman has had much to do with making it. For the most part it has not only been the work of men, but of men who have been withdrawn from intimate touch with life. To a great extent this

accounts for the hardness and unreality of dogmatic presentations of the religion of Jesus. These presentations lack the very element which was most prominent in the character of Jesus Himself. The power of Jesus was largely due to the fact that there was so much of the woman in Him. I will tell you why I considered this remark illuminating. The feminine possesses more of the self-giving quality than the masculine; the ego is less intrusive. A woman is able to sink herself entirely in the wellbeing of another in a way that is seldom true of a man. What the world needs is the combination of this quality with masculine strength, as it was in Jesus in such a unique degree. It is almost a pity that we think so much of God in terms of the masculine only. Even this word "Son" throws us upon that line of suggestion, and its true significance may be weakened thereby. God is the mother-heart of the universe. If you want a symbol for Divine love, the nearest we can get to it is mother-love. Yet when we are thinking of the Divine love in man we call it the "Son." Perhaps you can see now why I prefer the word Christ. It stands for the self-giving of God, the love that sinks the self in its object. But really it does not matter much what we call it, so long as we see it for what it is. To believe in the Divine Son is to believe in your own divinity and in the divinity of all mankind. It is to believe in the victory of love in the human heart. It is to believe in the one God who indwells all.

It is to believe in Jesus, and all for which Jesus stood. It is to believe in the life eternal, and to help to mediate it to sinful, sorrowing men. Let me repeat, and urge upon you, that to know this, and give effect to it, is to pass from darkness to light; it is to become a saviour. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."

SIN AND SALVATION

"And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways; "to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins.” — LUKE i. 76–7.

THIS passage from the song of Zacharias probably formed part of a primitive Christian hymn. Several of these hymns have been preserved for us in this particular gospel, and very beautiful they are both in form and spirit. They include the Magnificat, the song of the angels on Bethlehem's hill, and the particular song of Zacharias which is our text, as well as the pathetic song of Simeon in the Temple at the presentation of the holy child Jesus. This song of Zacharias, whence our text is taken, is a particularly fine example of sacred poetry. In substance it is an adaptation of Old Testament language to New Testament ideas. The actual date of its composition we have no means of judging, beyond the fact that it must have been earlier than the gospel which contains it, and therefore must have been one of the first definitely Christian hymns ever sung by a congregation. The particular sentence which forms our text, therefore, possesses a significance which can only be rightly understood by getting

into the atmosphere of Judæo-Christian ideas, the atmosphere in which it was born. I need not say much about the personality of the child about whom these words are supposed to have been spoken, John the Baptist. Indeed, there is some probability that originally they did not refer to John the Baptist at all, but to Jesus Himself. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the phrase "Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord." This is an Old Testament idea, based no doubt upon an allusion to the custom of sending heralds in front of the cortège of an Eastern monarch to announce his presence to his people. The real value of this part of our text consists in the statement that the spiritual man is the way-maker for God. The real weight of the text rests upon the two phrases, "knowledge of salvation" and "remission of their sins." If we can get at the meaning of these two phrases we shall clear up a good deal of the confusion that exists in the minds of some people today concerning the relation of the Gospel of Christ to salvation and to sin. Let us take the first of these.

What does the writer mean by "salvation"? It might perhaps be supposed that we are taking this question in the wrong order; it might seem that historically as well as in everyday experience the consideration of sin should come first and that of salvation afterwards. "First find out what is wrong," some of you might say, "and then we shall know best what is needed to put it right." But, strange as it may seem at first sight, this is not the true historical