Six months hence when the cold days of Advent are upon us again the mystery and comfort of fire will be with us. When the coal burns your grate think of the forest that grew and died and was buried that your coal might have virtue i it, and think beyond that of the original heat in the infinite sun that has made itself at home with you in your need. So when your heart glows with thought, courageous or contrite, refer the influence. to Christ, "for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in Him," jand to the Father who was "in Christ veconeiling the world unto Himself." Thus the doctrine of the Spirit is the means of glorifying Christ as Christ himself was the means of glorifying God.
The Lover of History.
(On this last festival of the Chris-ian year let your faith in Christ take this turn. The dynamic that was in Him was not lost through the exigencies of Time and Space any more than physical energy is lost the wide realms of Nature. It is only "converted," as the scientists would say, into' influences that enable and ennoble Christian life.
That is the doctrine of Whitsunday that needs to be expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity. Tt was the teaching of Thomas Carlyle, and it has passed into a commonplace of thought that personality is the lever of history. It is energy of soul that has recounted for every upward move and every saving fluence we know. And the supreme illustration is that the life of Christ has supplied the only heavenly light of men. None but he can provi end maintain our conviction of the Fatherhood of God and the brother-ood of men.
Not on Paper but in'Power.
The Life of Jesus then is our iluminagion and inspiration, and we may make that light incandescent in various ways according to- our various capacities. Some use sacraments, others use creeds; others again get the glow through efforts of duty or claims of fellowship, or the meditations and prayer of the heart. But though all these may be genius. of service there is one way that. cannot be neglected, and that is ike
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.