thew's Gospel. In the lower part of the picture we see the foot of the mountain and the father bringing to the apostles his epileptic and lunatic son. He appeals to them to cast out the demon that possesses him. They do their utmost, but in vain. They confess their impotence, and can only point the despairing father upward to the top of the mountain, whither Jesus. their Master has gone. So we raise our eyes to the upper part of the picture. There the Saviour appears transfigured. He is lifted above the earth; his garments shine as the light; Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the law and the prophets, summoned from their heavenly habitations, gaze upward into his face and hold converse with him; all authority in heaven and in earth is delivered into his hand; in him is purity and power, compassion and peace.

The two events the piteous supplication of the father in the lower half of the canvas and the glorification of the Lord in the upper half-are both occurring at the same moment. There is no anachronism in putting them together; it is a sort of anatopism rather; the painter has placed within our view two scenes which no mortal eye could have witnessed at the same time. But he has intimated that moral and religious relations transcend space and time. Raphael had the insight of true genius. His picture is the greatest picture of the world just because he saw beneath the surface of things to the innermost secret of them. The convulsions of the demoniac boy and the agony depicted upon the father's face are only symbols of the suffering and the helplessness of a lost humanity. The Son of man, who is also Son of God, from whom shines forth such

radiancy of glory and who draws toward himself the homage of both dead and living saints, is the symbol of Christ's power to redeem and bless. It is a picture of paradise lost and of paradise regained; a picture of humanity under the bondage and curse of sin, and of humanity exalted to be the dwelling-place of God; a picture of the impotence of man and of the power of Christ.

We remember the conversation between Jesus and the disciples, after he had come down from the mountain and had cast out the demon. They innocently asked the Lord: "Why could not we cast him out?" He tells them that it was because of their unbelief. Then follows one of his most remarkable utterances. To him who truly believes, nothing shall be impossible. "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and it shall obey you." Here is a great subject suggested, namely, REMOVING MOUNTAINS. I take this for the subject of my sermon. Let us consider it; and, in order to do this, let us ask, first, What mountains are these? secondly, Who removes the mountains? and thirdly, How are the mountains removed?

First, then, What mountains are these? I think we must grant that they are not physical mountains of earth and rock, lifting their summits into the sky, and barring one community from another. There was a child who held to this idea. She lived at the foot of a mountain in Germany. She had heard the German proverb: "Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute (Behind the mountain too, there are people living)," and she

wished to see them.

When she knelt by her bed to

say her evening prayer, she prayed the good God during the night to take away the mountain. In the morning she rose, confidently expecting that the mountain would be no longer there. She lifted her curtain, but what was the shock and disappointment to her childish faith to find that the mountain had not budged an inch-there it still stood, and the people behind it were no more visible than before. If she had thought more deeply upon Christ's words and had remembered in what connection he used them, she might have saved herself this disappointment, for nowhere do we find that either Jesus or his apostles removed physical mountains. The connection in which the promise of Christ occurs suggests that it is more spiritual wonders, like the healing of the demoniac, that he has in mind.

He

We ought not to doubt Christ's power to work in nature, as he did when he stilled the tempest and cursed the barren fig tree. He can answer prayer for rain, when the earth is parched and the cattle are dying. can answer prayer for healing, by giving new courage to the desponding patient and new skill to the ministering physician. And perhaps we ought to expect more at his hands in these semi-physical ways than we have been accustomed to believe. Still these are not the wonders which he prefers to work, nor are they the wonders most characteristic of the new dispensation. Old Testament miracles were mainly miracles in nature. But Pentecost is the type of New Testament wonders. The regeneration of the human spirit and the filling of it with the fulness of God,-these are

greater proofs of divine power than was the walking of Jesus on the sea. In the history of revelation the whole tendency is from the outward to the inward, from the physical to the spiritual. And so, in general, I think we may say that the mountains which Christ has in mind are those seemingly insuperable spiritual obstacles which stand in the way of the setting up or the progress of his kingdom.

These

There are mountains of sin in ourselves. separate us from God and hide from us the light of his countenance. Some villages in Switzerland are built in valleys so narrow that the sun does not rise upon them till toward noon, and it has hardly risen before it begins to set. Some Christians in like manner enjoy only brief intervals of God's presence. Great masses of sin hem them in. They know little of communion with Christ. Transgressions long indulged press with mountain weight upon their hearts. Their religion is one of fear more than of love. Like the inhabitants of those Swiss valleys, their faces are pallid and they are afflicted with those peculiar diseases which are incident to deprivation of the sun. How great a revelation. it ought to be to such that Christ can come over these mountains of our sins, can remove them, and so can save us from ourselves!

What an illustration of this we have in Augustine, the great church Father! In his early life he was so enamored of his sensual sins that he thought he could never give them up; they were dear to him as life itself, and he had no power to renounce them. But one day he heard the voice: " Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the

lusts thereof." He obeyed the voice, he gave himself to Christ, and behold! the mountains were gone, and he learned to live a life of purity such as he had never dreamed to be possible. It was a fulfilment of the words of the prophet: “I am against thee, O destroying mountain, which destroyest all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and will roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain, saith the Lord."

These mountains are not only mountains of sin in ourselves, but also mountains of unbelief in the church. When we have gotten rid of our own transgressions, we find that we have not carried our brethren with us. We are pickets of an advanced guard, a slender outlying column, destined to sure defeat unless we can have reenforcements. Then the great question is whether we can stir up faith and zeal in others. Oh, how mountainous seem the lassitude, the ignorance, the cowardice of the church at large! Gideon would have been disheartened when his thirty-two thousand dwinIdled down to three hundred, if God had not shown him that it was his pleasure to save Israel not by many, but by few. Jesus would have been disheartened in that period of general doubt and disaffection when the multitude departed from him if he had not seen that one believing and confessing Peter was worth more than the physical presence of all unbelieving Israel. "Will ye also go away?" he said to his disciples. The answer was reassuring: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." He knew that one grain of such faith as this could work wonders, and he answered Peter's confession by saying: "Thou