spirit-'Lord, save me, or I perish!' And as with Peter, so was it with Elijah. Great daring is followed by great despondency. Happy, that Elijah and Peter, and you and I, and all, are in the keeping of One who knoweth our frame.

NOTE next that the cause of despondency was his seeming failure. No doubt there was physical exhaustion in the case. God dealt with His servant in the utmost tenderness when He said to him, 'Arise and eat.' But deeper than that was a haunting sense of uselessness, a thought that the lessons of Carmel were in vain; a feeling that the new-born loyalty to God would pass, as its cry had passed and died in the mountain breeze. It was that feeling that rose to Elijah's lips when he moaned, 'I am no better than my fathers.' They had toiled and preached and died in the cause of God, and the land was sunk in idolatry after it all. Where they had failed, could he hope to succeed? Was not his hour of triumph but a ripple on the stream? That lay at the very roots of his despair-the bitter thought that his work had been in vain. Now there is not an earnest man or woman but has had seasons of that Elijah-mood, and in such seasons there is nothing so inspiring as to think of the seeming failure of the work of Jesus. He, like Elijah, had had His hours of triumph. The very children had cried, 'Hail to the Son of David.' But on Mount Calvary, as on Mount Horeb here, the toil and the triumph seemed to have been in vain. But we know that in that failure there was victory. The Cross was to be the throne, when all was done. That is, we serve a Lord who seemed to fail, but who was never more powerful than then.

REMARK, again, how Elijah, out of his darkness, won new views of God. When we see the prophet standing on Mount Carmel, we feel that the true God, for

him, is strong and terrible. He is the jealous God, the God of judgment, the God who says, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' He sanctions the slaying of the prophets of Baal. He reveals Himself as a consuming fire. Then when Elijah flies, to what point does he make? It is surely no chance that he travels to Mount Horeb. Was it not there, in that scene of desolate grandeur, that the stern law of a just God had been revealed? The God of Elijah was a God of law and judgment, and God is always and for ever that. But in our heavenly Father there is more than that; there are gentler and tenderer and sweeter attributes, and we grasp them but feebly in our hours on Carmel; like the stars, they shine most brightly in the dark. So at Horeb rose all the terrors of the storm. But Elijah felt that God was not in that. And an earthquake loosened the rocks and crashed them together. But Elijah felt that God was not in that. Then flashed the lightning, and the mountain echoes pealed out the rolling thunder, and the terrified merchant, caught in the storm at Sinai, would call it the voice of the Lord dividing the flames of fire (Ps. xxix.). But even in that, Elijah felt not God. Then came the still, small voice, and God was there. God was revealed in gentleness and peace. On Carmel He had been a God of fire; but at Horeb He would not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice. Was it not worth while being led out to the desert to win that grander thought about Jehovah ? Would not duty and life, and death and everything, be different to Elijah from that hour? It is one of the gains of our losses-of all hours like this hour of Elijah's -that we learn something about God in them that is never taught us in the triumphs on Carmel.

LASTLY, observe that God showed Elijah that he was

not alone. When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, says Bunyan, he thought he heard the voice of a man on before him saying, 'Though I walk

through the valley, I will fear no evil.' And Bunyan says that Christian was glad then, for he gathered that some one who feared God was in the valley as well as himself. Just so Elijah, in his valley of the shadow, despairingly thought, 'I, even I, only am left' (v. 10). And God comforted and cheered him with the assurance that in the valley there were thousands like himself (v. 18). Now when a boy or girl comes out for Christ, or takes a stand for what is pure and good, they sometimes seem to be standing quite alone. And often it is just that thought of being alone that makes it so hard to go forward gallantly. But you may be sure that you are not alone. In the same school, perhaps in the same class, are others who are with you in the fight. You may not know them any more than Elijah did. But God will show you your comrades in good time. Meantime, and quite apart from that, no one who is struggling to be good is solitary. 'Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.'

THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY

Evening

THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES' FEET

FR

Passage to be read: John xiii. 1-20.

ROM this point onward, in the Gospel of St. John, we have the private intercourse of Jesus with His disciples. When one is leaving for a distant country, and has transacted all necessary business with the outside world, he is fain to spend the few remaining hours in the sweet intimacy of the family circle. So Jesus, when the shadows of His departure stole around Him, dwelt in loving communion with His own. It is to this that John is pointing when he says (v. 1), ‘Having

Q

loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. He does not mean until the end of life. He means unto the end and limit of all love. Christ's love, like His life, is endless and unchangeable. There is no yesterday and no to-morrow in its depths. But in the latter hours of that now shadowed intercourse there was such outwelling of the eternal passion, that John felt that its tides were at the full. Christ always loved them; now He loved them utterly. That was the thought borne in on the disciple. Yet mark that this uttermost showing of Jesus' love did not lie in unchecked and passionate avowals, but in an action of the lowliest service, and in teaching that would make the loved ones strong. The noblest love must always keep its secrets. It becomes weak when it protests too much. The love of Jesus is the perfect pattern of what the love of every young man and woman ought to be. Note, too, that in this little prologue (vs. 1-3), there is the note of knowledge as well as of love. The proverb has it that love is blind; but the love of Jesus was very far from that. He knew that the hour was come that He should depart (v. 1). He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands (v. 3). He knew who should betray Him (v. 11). It was under the illumination of that knowledge that Jesus washed the feet of John and Judas. Does not that augment the wonder of the deed? Does it not set the crown upon its lowliness? Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich.

WHILE supper, then, was proceeding, on the night

before the Passover (for so we ought to translate it, instead of 'supper being ended,' v. 2), Jesus rose from table to perform this deed. Now the customary time for washing the feet of guests-and where men wore sandals and the heat was sweltering it was a very grateful and a very gracious practice-the customary moment for cleans

ing the feet was not during the mealtime, but before it. Here, then, there had been some little delay. The service had been omitted on this occasion. And I feel certain it had been omitted because no disciple was lowly enough to offer it. Probably it was about this very hour that they were disputing who should be the greatest (Luke xxii. 24). They were men like ourselves (we may thank God for it), and they had almost everything yet to learn. And was Peter, who had been arguing for his precedence, going to stoop down and wash the feet of John? And was John (who had his own thoughts about the traitor) going to play the servant to Iscariot? It was intolerable. It was impossible. They were willing to do much, but never that. So with hot feet (and hotter hearts) they went to supper, and Jesus saw it all and loved them still. Then Jesus rose and laid aside His garments. The bitterest rebukes are deeds, not words. He poured the water into a bason. He took the towel and girded Himself for service. And I think that when John, in his revelation on Patmos, saw the Son of Man girt with a golden girdle (Rev. i. 13), he would recall this girding at the supper. So Jesus (whose own feet were to be pierced so soon) washed His disciples' feet, and dried them. Did He say to Himself, as He washed the feet of Thomas, 'These feet will be beautiful upon the distant mountains'? Or did He say, as He dried the feet of Judas, 'These will soon lead the mob into the Garden'? I do not know. But I am sure that in the stern and stormy years to come, not one of the eleven would ever have his tired feet laved, but he would recall this memorable hour.

MEANWHILE Jesus was approaching Peter, and the

eleven were wondering what Peter would do. Perhaps Peter had been the noisiest in asserting that they would never catch him playing the foot-washer. And now, what a tumult there was in Peter's breast. What a tangle of good and evil in the man. All that was best in