that? What a pity I did not do this!" The thing they do not possess is that which they prize the

most.

Genius also, as well as happiness, is the power of seeing what there is in the present moment. Talent takes what has been thought and said before and reproduces it in new and brilliant forms. But genius is the power of seeing, in some present fact, the divine truth and beauty which no one else has noticed. Most of our literature comes from men of talent, who give us repetitions of what men of genius said in past centuries. Young poets give us dilutions of Tennyson or Browning; young critics offer us Macaulay or Mill, as the case may be, in a feebler form; artists copy other artists instead of copying nature; orators model themselves on the standard and well-known masterpieces in their line. But genius does not repeat the old things. To genius, Now is the accepted time. Shakspeare finds all humanity in his own soul and in the men and women around him, and throws the light from his own heart into history, illuminating its darkness, as the revolving light on our coast sweeps the horizon with its helpful flame. He brings up the dead past, and makes that a living present, till Cæsar and Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, the streets of ancient Rome, the Rialto of Venice, the old kings of Scotland, come up before us alive and fresh. The living now vivifies past and future.

Between our eyes and the fact which is before

To genius, the present

our eyes is usually a film, composed of what we have heard and read about it. We see things through this glass darkly. Genius breaks the glass and sees them face to face. fact is the most interesting of all events, full of wisdom, interest, meaning. And the blessed power of genius is this: that it can enable us also to find this wonder and beauty in all that is around us and before us. We go to Scotland or to Cumberland to view the places which Walter Scott or Wordsworth have made interesting. Looking through their eyes we can find something interesting in what otherwise we should never notice.

Goodness also consists chiefly in this, that now is its accepted time. To be good is to be able to do the present duty. Some of us are always a little behindhand, and never quite catch up with what we ought to perform. We see the train going out of one end of the station just as we are entering the other. Instead of doing with our might whatever our hand finds to do, we think we shall find a more convenient season hereafter. How much would we not give for an opportunity of talking with the Apostle Paul! Felix, the proconsul, had the opportunity, but he sent Paul away, and said he would see him again some other time. Probably the hour had come for his afternoon rest, and so he put off his conversation with the Apostle. Of all mottoes, the one I should like to have written over my door would be, "Do it Now." Was it Dr. Johnson who

had engraved on his watch the Greek text, Nỳg ἔρχεται, -"The Night cometh"?

The postponement of duty usually comes from cowardice. We have not the courage to face the present moment, and so with one consent we beg to be excused. But I once knew a woman so brave that she never shrank from an occasion, or lost an opportunity, or postponed a work. She always seemed to have more power than she could use. She was ready to meet any person, any need, any demand. When the thing was decided, then it was done. Her thought and act were one. I have known a man who never said, "I will think about it and tell you to-morrow." He was always ready to do the best he could do now. In that way he put so much into life that he seemed to have done the work of ten men. It is said that the productive power of an acre of land has never yet been ascertained. So I think that it has never yet been ascertained how much can be done in a single day. Time is not wanting. There is time enough for all we need to learn, to see, to do. What we need is

power, that is, quantity of life.

The Jews, in the time of Christ, were expecting the reign of the Messiah, which they called the Kingdom of Heaven. They had read the prophetic descriptions of those glorious days, and believed in them. When Messiah comes he will teach us all things, he will help us do all things. It will be easy then to be good, it will be natural to love God

and man. But till he comes we must remain as we are. One of the marvellous qualities of Jesus was his ability to see that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and that he himself was the Messiah. "The hour cometh and now is," he said. "I that speak to thee am he." The Jews had not the power to rise to this height of immediate vision, and see with. open eyes the actual reign of God. "No," said they, "you cannot be the Christ. It is blasphemy for you to profess to be the Christ. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Can anything which we see and know be divine? We know this man whence he is, but when Christ comes no one will know from whence he came. Messiah will not walk and talk with the common people like one of themselves. He will be too great and inaccessible for that. How absurd, indeed how wicked, for a man to say he is the Christ, when we know his father and mother, and whose brothers and sisters are with us! His father is Joseph the carpenter, whose shop is in the street called El-Husseph, in Nazareth.” Most people are mentally too far-sighted, they can see what is at a distance, not what is near. In the vale of Chamounix you cannot see the summit of Mont Blanc; but when you go fifteen miles away, it rises above all lesser mountains, and soars up into the skies in vast fields of dazzling snow, with frozen rivers plunging down enormous ravines; rises like a cloud of incense from the earth, in its charm and wonder. So the world had to go away several

centuries from Jesus before it could behold him. His own greatness was to be able to find in himself the essential character of the Messiah; to find power in himself to fulfil all prophecy; to know that the hour had come and was already present; to realize the majestic visions of Isaiah and David, and to say, "I who speak to thee am he."

In taking this ground, Jesus went back to the original Mosaic idea. The whole religion of Moses bore directly on the present life. Other religions laid the main stress on the future world and disparaged the present. But original Hebraism said not a word about the hereafter; it put its whole religious life into the hour. "Now" was its accepted time. Its God was a present God; Jehovah dwelling in the midst of the people, going before them in their journeys, staying with them as their King. This life was so full of God's presence that they did not think of the future. A future life is hardly mentioned in the Old Testament. The religious problem of the Brahmins and Buddhists is how to escape from time into eternity; the problem of Judaism and Christianity is how to put eternity into time.

Jesus renewed and fulfilled the old Mosaic idea, the old prophetic vision of "Immanuel, God with us." The Tabernacle of God was with men; the New Jerusalem came down from heaven. The Resurrection and the Life were not future, but present. Christianity came as a new inspiration to