the many ways that lead down to death. All your self-analysis is about as valueless as your opening the bud with your knife to see if there are flowers within. We must yield ourselves to the law of growth. Yet here the comparison fails. For human beings grow not like plants, all unconscious of their end, but always with some vision of what the next fulfilment shall be. So let it be the first duty always to have some vision ahead of the type of manhood or womanhood to which you are to grow. To this inward pattern in your heart you are certain to be fashioned, as certain as it is that men grow like the things they love.

Now, the inspiration of the truth that God knows us, is that we can always be answered when we pray that he will show us what we ought to be. God has never concealed from any man the vision of his higher self. He shows to every one just as much of the divine purpose as his conscience needs. Not that the fulfilment is shown. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. It is given us only to see that next degree of perfection which it is in our present power to attain. As surely as God knoweth our frames, so surely will he show us to what image we must strive. If God should show us all that we shall be, crowding eternity into the glimpses of an hour, it would be more than heart could bear, and we should stop discouraged by the way.

So it is that, looking to Jesus, we see not his fulness of life all at once. The vision of the divine man is not permitted to blind us with excess of light. Our eyes are holden, that we

cannot see.

Rather each man sees in Christ that perfection of his own nature which is already near to him to achieve. One loving soul sees love alone, and sits at the feet of Christ in penitent tears. Another of heroic blood sees nothing but the cross, with its victory over the flesh and contempt of the world. Yet another, some gentle John, finds in his Master a light enlightening the world; a sweet reasonableness, such as shall make evil seem to hide itself in shame. So each man loves and sees the Christ he can touch. Each receives the living word to the nourishment of his peculiar strength. The Oriental sees the Oriental Christ, all poetry, sublimity, and abounding prayer. The European sees Christ the breaker of bread, who heals the sick and helps the weak, whose kingdom is a more fruitful order in this world, and whose disciples are known by their power to dispel the miseries of their fellow-creatures. Thus does each man, and each type of man, find in Christ the vision most attainable. The God who reveals himself in conscience and spiritual desire would lay upon our shoulders an easy yoke. He shows us not all his perfect will, but that part of his ways which are now within our understanding, that commandment which it is now given us to obey.

Since God has searched and known you there are no mistakes in any of his dealings. The Father knows his child. And therefore, in all the strange qualities of your nature, in all the vicissitudes of your career, there is some loving adaptation to the need of your true and deepest life, which God knows as you do not.

With your present knowledge of your own soul, would you dare to plan and arrange your life unaided, unchecked by God's providential hand? If the Father should confer upon you a monarchy over worlds, if he gave you the transfiguring rod of Moses, or let you. erect, not in cloudland, but of solid earth, the paradise of your dreams,- if God should give you omnipotence, without omniscience too, would you be willing to employ your miracle? Ah! rather you would say, in proportion to the very greatness of your power: "My God, thou knowest what is best. Give me, Father, give me out of thy endless love-not my will, but thine! He has searched and known me. He knows me as I am now, and what I shall be forever." It is out of this perfect vision, this infinity of light, that all his care of us proceeds.

A NEW CREATURE.

Y heart of dust was made,

MY

But made for love and prayer,—

O Love of God! my heart pervade,

And form thine image there.

And form thine image there,

My heart is dark with sin,
But many a precious gift doth bear,
If Love shall enter in.

If Love shall enter in

At my poor house of clay,
A heavenly dawn will there begin
And grow to perfect day,—

And grow to perfect day,

In heaven's full light arrayed, Till endless songs forget to say My heart of dust was made.

THE HIDDEN LIFE.

"These things spake Jesus, and departed, and hid himself from them."- JOHN xii. 36.

HOW MUCH of the Master's life was hidden! The gospel story gives us, after all, but glimpses and echoes. How many of his words have passed into silence! What impenetrable shadows rest upon the larger part of his earthly history! And as he has so much hidden himself from us, so he was hidden from the men of his own time. He had meat to eat which

they knew not of. Read between the lines of your New Testament, and you find, again and again, allusions to the loneliness of Christ.

His disciples with reverent eye follow his retreating figure, as he departs from them to the hill-top, the wilderness, the garden at night; but they cannot go with him.

He leaves the multitude on the shore, and the little

ship carries him away. Yet even on the tranquil depths of Galilee we find him sleeping apart from the others, in the hinder part of the ship.

How often, alas! even when the throng is near, or some beloved disciple leans upon his breast, we are made aware of his spiritual solitude! — that his