Now I do not think, that I bringing a "railing " accusation" against our generation, in stating, that if our "godliness" is to be judged by our contentment, then alas, it will make a pitiably poor Our generation is, in fact, lamentably short of ' this divine grace, that "no Indian mine can buy." We all want everything "just so'—just now. All reforms are to come by "quick despatch." We have lost this heavenly grace of contentment. You will never find people of to-day singing in It is not, that prison, as Paul and Barnabas did.; a No, you find us at the prison window, with our heads out, if we can get them out, howling our grievances to the world. We have a habit of pitying ourselves. We didn't have this that and the other, and we haven't got them, and why haven't we got them? We complain about all limitations. This of course is wicked. That is the word for it. No wonder ihe Gospel is discredited. It is wicked. It has pleased God not to make a perfect world, but a world, that is capable of being made perfect. Meanwhile the duty of all, who have the faintest touch of Christ's spirit in them, is to be contented when they are not satisfied. There is no godliness in being contented when you have got all you want; anybody can do that; real godliness comes in when you have not got all you want, Res Avevsra Dom.
Now, here is where Sir Edward Clarke is so grand, I will say, so gorgeous an example. His father, a cultivated but unenterprising man, was a struggling silversmith in the city of London. His mother was a rigid religious woman who had no use for theatres. Here is his description of the home in which the six children were brought up. Of course they lived over the shop. "Beside the shop, there were only four rooms, a sitting-room, two bed-rooms, and a kitchen, and it taxed my mother's skill in management to make life in such a home consistent with decency and health. In a top room, where the parents slept, a cot held the latest child. Outside on the landing a bed was placed for one of che boys. The girls and servant slept in the other bed-room. The cook slept in the kitchen. The shop-boy slept on a truckle bed before the counter, and when in 1848 the arrival of a third boy ousted me from the staircase bed, I also had a folding-bed behind the counter in the shop. This was my sleeping-place from the time I was seven until we left the house ten years later." Think of that. Till he was 17 he slept behind the counter. He says he was scared in the darkness and by the noises in the street. There was plenty for him to complain about, but he doesn't. The little sitting-room had to be dining and drawing-room, and playroom, and it wag only 1éft. by 12ft. And there were eight of them to share it, and there was a piano in it. Tt ig a miracle that their tempers were not all ruined; the father trying to read, while the younger end was playing, What should we out here think of a room like that! We should complain poe SE SERRA ES ERR that we were hardly dealt with. Then holidays! "We had a walk in Finsbury Circus!" Ye young people of Tientsin and Shanghai!
walk in Finsbury Circus!" And as a great treat a week or two at Greenwich! No sands to dig in at Greenwich. Ye children who have three months at Peitaiho, think of that! What did they do at Greenwich? "The Park and the {great clock of the Observa-story gave enjoyments ever e: citing, ever fresh." I can 8 wry faces at the thought of a holiday like that. Yet hear what Sir Edward says of his childhood in that narrow home; "I thank God for such a hapnv childhood guarded and so trained. Had my parents been neonle of wealth and rank they could not. have given me a better start in life: they could not, if they would, have given me the same fulness of parental care."
Tae Two Ways oF Lire.
To have read that sentence to you has made it worth my while miner A ur ce amar
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.