IV. The Penny Restored. The three Evangelists all use the same word in reporting Christ's reply, "render"-that is, give up or give back. There should be a definite, well-understood act of giving up, or yielding, or surrendering yourself to God. Just as your mother sometimes takes up a penny and hands it over to you, so you should take your heart-your very self—as if it were a thing apart, and hand it over to God. Though God claims His penny, He does not apprehend you, and drag it out of your grasp by main force. He has given you the awful power of either keeping it or giving it back, and He receives it only from those who choose to give it. But remember that by your use or abuse of His penny you may brighten into an angel or darken into a fiend. Some will not restore the stolen penny, so that John's touching lament (chap. i. 11) is still true, "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." The penny is Christ's own without your consent, and He wishes it to be His own with the consent of all that is within you.

You are not to suppose that Christians are all to be like coins from the same mint. Oh no; each is to be himself. As your face is not exactly like the face of anybody else, so your character should have some marks of its own. A thoughtful boy once shouted, as if he had made a great discovery, "I am an I." Each young Christian is an I, and he might truly say, "I am two I's; the one I gives, the other I is given to God." We call a man an individual, as if he were strictly one and could

not be divided; but every man is dual. Two men dwell together in him, and when he deals with God the one is the giver and the other is the gift.

And you must restore the whole penny. Our silver and gold coins are milled, or toothed, or checked at the edges, because people used to clip bits off and keep the clippings for themselves. The coins were thus light, and had to be weighed to prevent cheating. Abraham weighed out the money for his buryingground. Though coins in the East to-day, as with us, have a definite name, size, and value, yet some merchants carry a small apparatus by which they weigh each coin, to see that it has not been lessened by Jewish clippers. Be sure you bring to God an unclipped penny. I have read that the Irish Kernes when baptized covered up their right arms, which they wished to be still consecrated to the devil for fighting. In the great things of the soul the law is, All or nothing. A clipped penny will not be accepted.

And when you restore your penny you must not take it back. Ah, perhaps you have often given yourself to God, and then recalled the gift. After I had preached this sermon a girl came to me and said something like this, "You took a penny in your hand, and showed us how you might give it to a boy and then take it back from him. You then said that that was what some people did when they restored God's penny. That is exactly what I have done many a time; but I want now to give myself to Christ, and never take back the gift." In his "Tales of a Grandfather" Sir

Walter Scott mentions a robber he knew who would never shake any person with his right hand, because Prince Charlie had once shaken it. What in us Christ has laid His hand on should be held by us as sacred to Him for ever.

Let me repeat the headings of the chapters in this simple story: the Penny Marked, the Penny Stolen, the Penny Claimed, the Penny Restored; and now the last is

V. The Penny Possessed.

It is never yours till it has been restored, and never safe till it is in better keeping than your own. A child I knew once got a gift of half-a-crown, "a silver penny," from his uncle. Right proud of it was he. He would not let any one touch it; he must have it in his very own hand, and feel sure that it was all his very own. He put it under his pillow at night and slept over it. At last he lost it. With a sorrowful heart he sought for it up and down, and when it was found he gave it to his mother to keep for him. He felt it was his own all the more because it was in her keeping. And in the same way you are to commit your soul in well-doing unto your faithful Creator, for it never can be really your own so long as it is in your own hands only. The penny is yours that you may make it God's.

"How much money have you?" a king in the Middle Ages asked a rich Jew. The Jew mentioned a sum. Oh, you have far more than that," the king replied. "No," said the Jew; "what I now have is

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not mine, for you can take it from me; what I spent, that I had; but what I gave away, that I have. I have told you the exact sum that I gave away." Thus you really have only what you have frankly given up to God.

You cannot give up your penny too soon. A country minister was telling me that a summer visitor put into the plate at the church door every Sabbath a new sovereign fresh from the mint. He wished to offer to God virgin gold, unsoiled by worldly uses. Have the same spirit in your handling of God's penny. Bring to the Saviour a young heart, not world-worn, but bearing upon it the fresh, sharp, unsullied marks of the heavenly mint. Thus will you render unto God. the things that are God's, and then you will strive to render also to every one what is his due.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

"I am the Good Shepherd."-JOHN X. II.

We now know a great deal about the early Christians. Learned men have searched and better searched among the catacombs, and other remains of antiquity, so that the early Christians now live before us. We can easily know their ways quite as well as we know the ways of the Americans or the Irish. For one thing, they were very fond of sign-language and object-lessons; and they had some favourite objects of which they never grew tired. It is very wonderful that they employed only images of joy and peace, though they were so cruelly persecuted. Foremost among these was the Good Shepherd, for Christ was the centre of all their thoughts. Pictures and engravings of Him adorn almost every chapel in the catacombs, and hundreds of seals, rings, vases, and lamps. Now He carries the lamb on His shoulders, again in His bosom. This picture seems to have charmed the very heart of the early Church. They used to open their churchmeetings by reading the parable of the Good Shepherd. This subject is almost as great a favourite with us, especially with the young. Every hymn-book,