There are few things more sickening to the earnest student than to see how little pains the majority are willing to take in order to get at the truth. They want it all done up for them in small pillsformulæ, cram-books, articles of a creed which they can accept on authority, and swallow with the least possible trouble. It may be said, indeed, that life is not long enough to make diligent search in the ever-expanding domains of truth, that we must more and more depend upon the experts for our scientific knowledge. That is true. But one would suppose that in practical matters, especially in the subject of religion which deeply concerns every man, there would be an earnest endeavour to gain-not indeed the full equipment of the professed theologian-but at least an intelligent apprehension of the main questions at issue, and a firm hold on the broad principles of religious truth, so as not to have their fundamental beliefs at the mercy of every specious talker and be carried about with every wind of doctrine." But because this truth can only be bought with the expenditure of time and labour, they count the price too dear.

(2) Again; buy the truth by the sacrifice of prejudice. You know that Bacon said there were four great sources of error against which the truthseeker must ever be on his guard. He called them quaintly idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the forum, and idols of the theatre. Prejudices or prepossessions might be a better word to denote what he means by the term idols. He would say, first, that we are liable to certain prepossessions as

members of a particular race or nation, and are apt to pass judgment on everything from our own standpoint as though nothing had any significance except in its relation to our own race and nation. This is sufficiently obvious.

Then came idols of the cave or den, illusive appearances arising from the hidden constitution of our nature and temperament as individuals. It has been found in observing eclipses and other sidereal phenomena that one man's eye sees quicker than another's; so astronomers in their calculations take account of this in what is called the personal equation. Now there is a personal equation to be made in estimating the truth on any subject. The temperament of one man is pessimistic, of another optimistic the tendency of one is to overrate difficulties, of another to underrate or overlook them: one man always inclines to believe what he hopes may be true, another to believe what he fears may be true, and so on. The tendency is latent in the man, hidden in the recesses of his own inner nature, an idol of the den. It must be dragged to light and corrected, or it will lead him into error. Also in reading the works of others who continually manifest such a bias, it must be noted, and deduction made accordingly.

Then there are what Bacon calls the idols of the forum, including among other things popular opinions. This largely sways our judgment. We do not like to set ourselves against the mind of the majority. What everybody is saying must surely be true and yet, as likely as not, it is false. The highest truth is generally found with the minority.

The few discover what it takes generations for the many to learn.

Last, Bacon names the idols of the theatre, by which he meant the one-sided impressions gathered from one particular school of thinkers to which a man has attached himself, but which we may fairly take to cover party prejudice and class prejudice in the widest sense, the influence of exclusive attention to and training in one school of thought, religious, political or whatever it may be.

Now truth must be bought by the sacrifice of these idols. These prejudices and prepossessions must be given up. And this costs time and labour first of all to discover them, to recognize that we have been biassed by them, and further, it costs effort of no mean order to divest ourselves of them and become thoroughly impartial. It is part of the price truth costs.

(3) But further yet, it costs self-denial, self-control, in our daily life. Tennyson has written," the faith that comes of self-control," and the line has puzzled many readers. But by faith, I take it, Tennyson meant the vivid apprehension of divine truth, the firm grasp on the eternal realities of our being, which the writer of our text had in mind when he wrote "buy the truth." His meaning will become clearer if I point out how men miss the truth and lose faith by lack of self-control. Take some most familiar instances. The man in a passion is manifestly incapable of sober judgment. His temper clouds his reason. And the man who is frequently in a passion, the man of ungoverned temper, will constantly be passing wrong verdicts on men and

things. He has his lucid intervals of calm judgment; but, hampered by the conclusions to which he has already committed himself, he will naturally seek to justify these his mind will be confused between present and past judgment. Sophistry will creep in to reconcile the two. His hold on the truth will be wavering and uncertain through want of selfcontrol.

Or take the man who fails to control his appetites, who follows blindly the impulses of his senses. Do we not know that he sinks more and more to the level of the animal and looks upon the world through a beast's eyes, not a man's? Can he find the truth? Least of all, can he in matters of spiritual concern. To the man who lives for and in his senses, they will ever appear unreal. He will have no faith in them. This material world that ministers to his carnal delights is for him the real existence. It hems him in too closely to let him see anything beyond. No faith, no truth for him!

So of the man, who, to use a common saying, is eaten up with vanity and selfishness; or the woman who abandons herself to grief, yielding weakly to the tide of sorrow that sweeps in upon her from some recent calamity. She cannot see things as they are, and faith suffers eclipse. May I quote here a sonnet of Elizabeth Browning's :— "Methinks we do as fretful children do,

Leaning their faces on the window-pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view :

And thus, alas, since God the Maker drew

A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,
The life beyond us, and our souls in pain

We miss the prospect we are called unto

By griefs we're fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! Hold thy sobbing breath
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong,
That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along

The sunset consummation-lights of death."

Hence I say, the truth must be purchased by selfdenial and self-control.

(4) This leads me to mention one more coin that is included in the price. Buy the truth by experience. Much truth is bought this way involuntarily, and a heavy price it often seems. That he is a fool who is surety for a stranger; that an ill-spoken word may kindle a world of strife; that a whisperer separateth very friends; that the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury; that strong drink at the last biteth like a scorpion and stingeth like an adder; that the way of transgressors is hard; that he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption-these, and many other truths, great and small, have often been learned in the school of experience by those who would not learn them from any other teacher. They have got the truth at last it is theirs now, with little fear of losing it. They have bought it with experience. They did not want to pay that price -never meant to pay it but they have paid it, and got the truth in exchange.

We would, however, speak rather of voluntary purchase. It is not only the bitter truths of life that may be so learned, but the sweet ones also. I doubt if the most blessed truths can be fully ours till we have made them our own by experience. Christ said," It is more blessed to give than to