never can do the grand work. The world can roll on quite well without them. The great thing the world wants to-day is the resurrection of Christ as a power in our streets, in our homes, and in all our work. It needs the glory of the ascension of Christ, until men trade with a bright cloud over their heads. We are to bear the troubles of life and indulge in its hopes, and live and die, carried up and carried forward on the wings of these grand realities, saying, "I have a Saviour, I have a Lord, who bears me on his heart before the throne of God; who is my keeper, my shepherd, and who presently, in an hour when I may not think of it, shall come to ask what I have done with the talent of the Resurrection, with the pound of the Ascension; what I have done in the vineyard which he planted with a cross."

Brethren, if I speak of what the world wants, may I not speak also of what heaven wants? Heaven seems to need such men as Christ would make. It is a mistake to suppose that heaven needs to be peopled. We cannot count the multitudes of it. Heaven needs but one thing: it needs those who are prepared for it. Heaven must be inhabited by men within whom there is incarnate the ascension of Christ; who have made up their lives around the truth that Christ died for them and rose and ascended; a truth which in the hands of the Holy Spirit takes away sin and breaks the power of the world, and renews and

sanctifies and glorifies the heart. We overestimate ourselves if we think heaven will be impoverished without us. Still heaven wants us, and at our best; and no man is at his best until he has made up his character with the divine truths.

These things come to us in this world where we have need of them. It doubtless is true that we need them here as much as anywhere. It is in this world that these things have been wrought out, and that means that it is in this world they are to be used. Christ did not rise and ascend in heaven; he rose and ascended here. They make an earthly fact, an every-day truth. They furnish one of the commonplaces of God's government for this commonplace world. Let us take the facts here; then let us consent to the discipline of the world while they come to help us; to be a part of our training in patience, in charity, in faith, in all devotion. I know it seems hard to wait for the glory of the Lord; but the marble may well be content to tarry in the studio of the sculptor until he has touched it again and again; and the statue will be willing to wait, if it knows that presently the last rough and the final tender touch shall be given, and after that— not always kept under the chisel and the hammer; not always in this rude workshop, with the broken stone and scattered dust upon the floor; not always waiting among these masks and models-presently it shall stand out in its place of honor, where men shall look up to catch the thought that

is incarnate in the marble, and the lips shall speak and the face shall reflect the thought of Him out of whom the creation has sprung; a living thought for a world that needs to be made alive.

Let us

Why stand we gazing into heaven? take the truths of heaven and go down and live them out. The Lord is gone, but he is here. It is not the repeating of his name, it is the doing of his will which is to avail. He is here; not in the far country alone, but watching us here. When McGregor led his clan into the battle of Prestonpans, and the chief was wounded and fell bleeding upon the ground, his men, dismayed and disheartened, began to waver, until the wounded chieftain, raising himself upon his elbow, while the blood flowed from his wounds, cried out, "I am not dead, my children; I am looking at you, to see you do your duty." They rallied and rushed on to that whereunto he had called them to the field. Christ lives. He is here; he is looking at us. He is here, not to be met with our wondering eyes, but with our obedient life. “Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing." "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever."

If any man will serve,

Then let him follow me ;

For where I am, be thou right sure,

There shall my servant be.

VII.

NOT BY MIGHT, BUT BY SPIRIT.

SCRIPTURE LESSON: 1 Cor. ii.

TEXT: Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Zech. iv: 6.

HIS was one of the instances in which might

THI

and power, that is, a control by force, would be thought to have its place. It was a question between two nations, two peoples. The Jews had been trying for a long time to rebuild their temple. They had been carried into captivity. To gain the right to rebuild the temple would be the occasion for revolt. Let them conquer their oppressors, go back to their own country, and raise again the house which had been destroyed. But the record of the rebuilding is this: "The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus." Cyrus was a pagan and cared nothing for the temple; but the Lord stirred up his spirit to incite the Jews to build their house, and they began it. Then came those long periods of opposition, when Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes occupied the throne of Persia, and the Samaritans were continually hindering these temple-builders.

That was a time for them to rise against the Samaritans; it was a time for God to make bare his arm, as he had done against Pharaoh and his host. Instead of that, the Lord put it into the heart of Darius, the king, to search the records of the kingdom, where he found the old decree which God had inclined Cyrus to make. Renewing that decree, he rebuked the Samaritans, and required them to aid those whom they had been opposing. The temple rose to its completion, not by the might of arms, not by the power of revolution, but "by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." It became, then, in the highest sense, a house that was not made with hands.

This is to be accepted as God's ordinary way of working in the world. He does exercise power; he does come with judgment; he does put forth his omnipotent force and control men and nations; but his common way is quiet and gentle, in the hearts of men; and when he uses more violent and evident methods, in them and after them may be found this silent working of his spirit. The wind rends the mountains and breaks the rocks in pieces; the earthquake makes the hills tremble; the fire flashes from cliff to cliff, and lights the deep gorges; but God is not in wind, or earthquake, or fire. He comes "not by might, nor by power." But there is "after the fire a still, small voice." This method of God's working commends itself to us. It is more majestic; it is grander. The