room is very bright close all the shutters and try to keep the light as the winter's supply of illumination. In ceasing to be helped, you will cease to possess what you have received before. God must be continually giving to us. Life is ordered upon this plan. Our constitution shows this need. The Holy Scriptures declare it. It has the manifest advantage of keeping our minds gratefully and trustfully upon God. As our mutual dependence fosters friendship and affection, makes society possible and pleasant, so does our dependence upon God promote and enrich our spiritual life. We can never think of God as in any sense dependent, except as He may choose to be. Yet in a very real way He does depend upon us and employ us. When He wants his child nurtured and instructed, He places him in the care of a father and mother who will be glad to do this for Him. He gives his teaching through the lives of men; He proclaims his loving-kindness, not by angels descending from heaven, but by men and women who go into all the world proclaiming the good news of God. Thus, while making use of us, He carries his love the further, and allows us to call upon Him for his assistance, not to remove our work, but to enable us to do it and to accomplish the purpose of our being. It is this desire to help us because He loves us which brings into the world the divine grace which

we name Christ, who does not come to conceal the Father, but to reveal Him; who is not here to compel us, but to assist us; who indeed brings fullness of rest and strength, but who offers these to all who come to Him, who in the coming shall find grace to help. to help. There is an evident advantage in having the grace of God thus clearly manifested to us, for we know Christ. We have seen Him. We have looked day by day upon his helpfulness. We know the method and the spirit of his kindness, and when we come to Him we come boldly, because it is not to a stranger, but to one whose good will has been proved to the uttermost, and who has taken to himself the fullest power and right to help us to the largest blessings of the love of God. We come to Him, then, and, coming, find the eternal grace. He taught us that this was his place. More than any other He seemed to disown himself; He said He could do nothing apart from the Father who had sent him; that his life was only to do the Father's will. This was so complete that He spoke the words which have sometimes confused while they should always convince, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He taught us to come to Him for the divine blessing. He claimed the authority to teach, and in all ways to help. He said the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment

to the Son; that men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He saw in the temple men who had exhausted the power of their religion to help them, and on the great day of the feast He cried, "Come unto me. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." He made that sublime declaration," I give unto men eternal life." He paraphrased the twenty-third Psalm, which He had learned at his mother's knee, when she interested Him by telling Him it was his grandfather's hymn. It was after this manner that He repeated it: “I am the Good Shepherd, ye shall not want. I will make you to lie down in green pastures. I will lead you beside the still waters. Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need fear no evil, for I am with you. My rod and my staff shall comfort you." He even added what had not entered into the thought of the first Psalmist, the promise which exalts and glorifies the Psalm, "I will give my life for the sheep." He let men come to Him and remain there. I believe that He never pointed men away from himself. When a young man asked Him what he should do to have eternal life He answered, "Come, follow me." When a man was dying at his side, bewildered by the pains of crucifixion, appalled at the future opening before him, and turned to Him. for help, He let the dying man commit himself to

his compassion: "I shall be in Paradise to-day, and you shall be with me." He said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." Only He could say these things. When a man in his fear came to the apostle in the prison, and prayed to be told what he must do to be saved, St. Paul pointed him to One who is able to save men. If Christ had been there He would have pointed him to no one. He would have drawn him to himself, and saved him there. We may wonder what would have happened if those who came to Christ had passed Him by and sought the more distant help, if the ruler whose daughter was nigh to death, and dead, had prayed to the God of Abraham for her life; if the sailors in their sinking boat had cried to Him who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand; if the blind man had turned his sightless eyes towards the sun crying for light; if the sisters of Bethany had prayed to God in his high heaven. We do not know what the result would have been; but this we know, that the prayer to Him restored the girl to her home, quieted the storm, saved the ship, gave sight to a man born blind, brought the Resurrection and the Life to those who loved Him.

Can we not learn the way of the divine help, and see that it does not stand aloof from us, but comes nigh to our door; that we have not to seek it as if

it were far away, but to receive it as it comes seeking and saving us; for our seeking is but receiving? We call upon Him when He is near and here where we stand, where we kneel, we find that He will abundantly pardon. We are indeed told to ask, to seek, to knock, but his asking is before ours, and because of his call upon us, we call upon Him. We knock at his door, but there is another word: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." To hear his voice and open the door is to bring Him in, where He will sup with us and we shall sup with Him. We cannot feel deeply enough how strongly and constantly, with what passion and desire, with what importunity of love, He longs to help us in our life. Why should any one forget this, or refusing to see how truly He comes to us in his Son, who has all authority to bless us in the name of God, out of his own unsearchable riches, address himself to the King, eternal, almighty, invisible, who from his throne governs the universe? He is nearer to us than that. He is more than king; He is our Father. He is more than our Father in heaven; He is our Father upon the earth. He is more than help; He is "a very present help," and He stands in the greatness of his affection, stands so near to us that our whisper can reach his ear, that our outstretched hand can fall into the hand of almighty strength and everlasting love.