snowflower of California. Of an intense crimson colour, and very large and tall, it is a beautiful flower; it is called the "snow-plant" because it springs directly out of the snow, and is most striking and handsome growing out of it. Thus many of the brightest Christians and most distinguished men in society commenced life in the harshest conditions, spent their youth in the most cruel environments, and yet bourgeoned into gold and purple through many years of prosperity and honour.

Then, again, what we may call the apprenticeship of life is to many deserving young persons bitterly disappointing and exquisitely painful. The brilliant hopes of earlier youth soon drop as blighted blossoms. The literary aspirant is chilled by harsh criticism, the artist's pictures are curtly rejected, the lawyer remains briefless, the physician waits in vain for patients, the preacher's sermons are not well received, and the young shopkeeper is disheartened by multiplied difficulties: these early years of one's career are often peculiarly humiliating and distressing. Yet let none despair, for rich ultimate blessing may come out of and atone for weary and apparently wasted days. Much has been heard lately about flowers being retarded by a cold process; that they may flower when desired, they are kept for a while in an ice-house at a temperature somewhere near zero, but this severe treatment does them no damage: on the contrary, when they are removed from the ice-house and deposited in a warm place they begin to sprout up with greater rapidity for the delay, they are more impervious to unpropitious conditions, and lilacs, laburnums, lilies,

azaleas, and the rest are exhibited and crowned for their exceptional splendour.

By the providence of God, the delays and postponements of human fortune may be similarly recompensed; the years that the caterpillar wasted, that the frost retarded, are restored in fairer, mellower fruit. And all this is just as true of mysterious failure and barrenness in our intellectual and spiritual culture. There are times when all effort seems abortive, and all progress suspended in the higher life; yet be certain such honest endeavour will tell later. Alfred Stevens says: "If you have unexpectedly done well, attribute your success to the effect of previous study." All faithful striving leaves a balance of unexpended force in the brain and heart which one day will delightfully surprise us as though it were an immediate heavenly inspiration. Let not young or old despair. Disappointment often means in the end overflowing vats, and this issue recurs too often to allow us to believe that it belongs to the chapter of accidents. Throughout life we must hesitate to interpret discouragements into final and absolute defeats. The light, the rain, the dew of God work wonders; the locust shall be followed by the butterfly and bee and bird, the song of the vintage and the shout of Harvest Home. God may restore to us what the caterpillar wasted, as He did to Job.

Is there not a truth in the text touching the future life? The whole of this mortal career wears to many the character of complete failure, locusts mar it beyond the possibility of any present redemption; it is a record of unrealized gifts, unfulfilled desires, vain strivings,

unreached ideals; it never comes to fruition, for hateful swarms devour it. Does not the hope of a future world come in here? Such was the thought of Paul, and the truer and purer our heart the more clearly this hope glows in it. The years wasted here by the locust and palmer-worm shall burst out in rare fruitions in the glory everlasting. The leaf consumed by the pitiless caterpillar is converted into splendid satin; a parable, let us say, of the mysterious processes by which care, sickness, loss, toil, suffering, and death— God's sombre alchemists-transmute the green but fading leaves of earth's glory and joy into the enduring felicities and splendours of a higher sphere and a grander life. Let us then in the days of deepest failure and distress be true to God and ourselves. Conan Doyle justly observes: "The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished." This life is "the half-told story." Let us confidently wait for the other half in the heavenly places, and it will entirely justify our faith and patience. "And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed."

XXVIII

THE FATUITY OF RELIGIOUS

INDIFFERENCE

But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his merchandise.-MATT. xxii. 5.

T

HE imagery of this parable is simple, yet its teaching is large indeed. Our Lord here announces that in the fullness of the times God has called the race to fellowship with Himself; that He has provided richly for its satisfaction and perfecting; that He has opened to it a great prospect of eternal life and blessedness. And just as distinctly He teaches that the whole of this divine purpose, so full of grandeur and graciousness, is to be realized in Himself.

The invitation of the king was differently received: in one case the invited maltreated the royal messengers and slew them, whilst others who were called made light of the whole thing. Thus in all generations is the message of God treated-some scorning it with anger and contempt, whilst others simply ignore it. Of this latter class, who tranquilly put aside the message of Christ, we now speak. Much of this levity toward religion is found in the spirit of our age. In the literary world we have examples of this. Renan

in France was long a representative of this bantering spirit. He calls religion "the romance of the infinite." God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, soul, conscience, eternity, heaven, and hell are thrilling episodes in a gigantic fiction, shadows which come and go at the beck of priestly magicians. The same spirit is displayed in English literature. Well-known writers who have little sympathy with supernaturalism have nothing bitter to say against religious faith; they rather discuss it as an innocent and beautiful phase of thought that we ought not willingly to let die. They treat it as one of the fine arts. It is the inspiration of poetry; it may find moving expression in oratorios; it provides admirable dramatic spectacles; it is replete with fine themes for artists. Others pleasantly dismiss religion as a useful illusion. Lecky calls it "the romance of the poor." It is a pleasant dream, perhaps even a useful dream, yet only a dream. The Bible is characterized as a collection of "the fairy stories of God." Pretty phrase! Students of a different taste or temper would denounce it as a fraud, a superstition, a scandal; but to the gay spirits who have not seriousness enough to be angry it is a myth, a romance, a story of pathos and beauty. They make light of it. Agnosticism elevates indifference into a philosophy and a religion.

The same levity is more conspicuous still in actual life; thousands treat the gospel as though it were a romance, yet they would shrink from calling it one. Science!-that touches us. We listen with eagerness and admiration; we are curious and sympathetic; the subject is full of fascination. Politics!-here our preferences and antipathies are at once evoked; we ap