these words in the only sense in which they were capable of accepting them. "All the things that we see shall pass away; but the pleasures that we acquire by faith are to last for ever." True; but seen as such, what a selfish truthselfish in proportion to the selfishness of the hearer. For as the eye only sees what it brings with it the power of seeing, so the soul only can understand what it is disciplined to understand. The spirit rising into higher regions finds new meaning in the words of Christ. The things that are seen are not fit to be food of an aching soul, not because they come to an end, but because they are "of the earth, earthy." The things that are not seen are eternal; not because they last for ever, but because they are the things of the kingdom of God.

Words like these, then, I say, are spirit and they are life. They reveal the spiritual depths that are everywhere about us. They befit the injunction to be perfect "even as our Father in heaven is perfect,”—an injunction, in one sense, fraught with despair, because we feel too keenly that perfection in this world is not within our reach; but in another sense, full of hope-stimulating, purifying hope-because the appeal to us to be perfect implies that those to whom it is

addressed are immortal.

Better to be immortal

spirits, with the sorrow of imperfection, than to be, however perfect, a machine, and to be the servants of death. The Bible speaks to us as no other book can speak, because it treats us as having capacity for infinite evil, but also for infinite good.

And the saying of our Lord Himself, which I have chosen as our text to-day, is one of those distinctive sayings of Christianity that have life and growth, and, while appreciable by the little child in a sense which he can appropriate and live by, can never be exhausted by the most Christ-like of men. The words were addressed at first to the unlettered peasants of Galilee, to those who were on the threshold of their new life as disciples. The Saviour does not mention from what burdens He called men to be delivered. He says nothing of hell, or even of sin. He does not instance those who were most evidently suffering from social degradation, or from sickness, poverty, or bereavement. Nor of what nature the rest was to be, did He make clear. The Greek equivalent of the word He used, is váπavσis, merely cessation. And each of His hearers would receive His words as he was able to receive them. The slave would

think, "This teacher is somehow going to gain for me my freedom;" the poor man would think, "There is a time coming when these inequalities of wealth will be redressed;" the sick man would think, "My great burden is my sickness. When that is healed, I shall be quite at rest." But they could not listen for long to the new Teacher without finding new anxieties stirring in their breast; new yearnings waking into life; and a desire for a rest they had never sought for before -a respite not from sorrow or poverty or oppression, but from their own wayward fancies and erring wills-a rest for their souls.

And as they accepted the call to come to Him which the Master offered them, they went on to learn new facts as to "rest" and the opposite of rest. The word Christ used was a word signifying a negative gift-" cessation" from labour and anxiety. But they were to learn that it implied something else, which no negative gift can satisfy. The body is rested in the most effectual manner, and bodily strength regained, by quiet, and absolute inaction. mind that has been wrought upon by hard study or by anxiety is best relieved by amusement or change. Body and mind are rested by sleep, because they then remain in entire inac

The

tion. But if the spirit of immortal man is to find rest, it cannot be in lying inactive. The true rest of the body and mind may be in quiet, that of the soul must be in activity, not in vacuity. If it has hitherto worn the yoke of the world, there is no rest in only throwing off that yoke. It needs some other yoke in its stead. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here is one of the glorious paradoxes of the Gospel. The true deliverance from burdens is in taking upon us a yoke. Rest is the reward of faith. If we have found something in which we can implicitly trust, we have found also that in which we can rest.

But in this case it is not something, but some one in whom rest is offered; and here we have another and perhaps more marked distinction between the teaching of Christ and that of all other moralists. The philosopher holds forth his philosophy as the rule for men; Christ holds forth Himself. This wisdom, at least, has been justified of her children. Christ, not Christianity, is the power that has soothed and satisfied the spirit of the great multitude which no man can number. And rest in Him-not in our dogmas

-is the foundation of that unity (so different a thing from uniformity) in which Christ desired His servants to be knit together. On this Festival of All Saints, we are specially reminded, in the services for the day, of the great company of faithful people, both those who have lived and those who still live on earth. This communion of saints is the fellowship of those who rest in Christ. We sometimes speak of the dead as those who rest in the Lord. The phrase is a good and true phrase, if only we keep in mind that the rest of the saints is not only cessation from the toils of life, but a more complete repose in the nature of their Master.

In that unfathomable prayer, recorded by St. John, in which the Divine Son intercedes with the Father for the world He was so soon to leave in bodily shape, Christ prays for His immediate followers, and for those who should believe on Him through their word-"That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." My brethren, when we are most disheartened with the prospects of the truth or the Church, let us refresh ourselves by the thought of what unity is, and by what path it is to be