the whole world lieth in wickedness."* It is nineteen hundred years since the Apostle made this declaration, and much effective work has been done by valiant and diligent servants of God. Does his declaration still hold good? Does the whole world still lie in wickedness? How much of it has been penetrated by the light, and been converted by the grace of Christianity?

Taking the population of the whole world, it is safe to say that not more than one person in four is even nominally a Christian. And taking those who may be ranked under this head, we know alas! too well, how very like heathen people many of them are actually living.

Such knowledge as this—viewed entirely apart from the vexed question as to whether the world is better or worse than formerly-is quite enough to show us the great need that the Lord has of those who will coöperate with Him in fitting the world for His Second Ad

vent.

We certainly would not like any honored guest to find our house in such turmoil and untidiness as now mark even our own national and individual life. How, then, can we pray: Thy Kingdom come, without feeling how very unready the whole world is for the reappearance of such a Lord?

Is not the prayer an insincere one if we ourselves are not ready to lend our aid, when He calls for it, in its fulfilment? There must be the fixed contemplation of His Advent; but there must also be the energy of daily life.

Without the one, we should be at least to a large extent without the other. Even with this awful event

*1 St. John v: 19.

in mind, we are very much swallowed up in what is mortal and selfish. How few rise above their immediate surroundings, their own circumscribed lives, or look out beyond them to the lives of others, to the world that is to be!

Are there many of us whose purposes of heart are checked or controlled by the thought of the Day of Judgment?

If we ourselves are not thus influenced, we shall, not be very much concerned as to its effect upon the consciences and lives of others.

And so one of the chief things for us to learn to-day, and to recall for many of us have already learned, and forgotten it—is the fact that to each one of us personally and directly this message of the text is daily addressed: The Lord hath need of you. For the accomplishment of His plans for the souls of our neighbors, He needs that our own souls shall be weaned from this fascinating world, and intently fixed on Him.

Thus by the consciousness of our own incompleteness without Him, and of the sweetness that comes into our lives whensoever He is admitted and entertained * within our souls, we shall be the more moved-nay, compelled to bring others into the same condition of blessed possession and expectation.

He does not so much command our services, as ask us for our coöperation. He may well order us, and He does at times: for we are His creatures, and exist only for His pleasure. But at other times He seems to make Himself dependent upon us, and to win us to His service by the argument of His needs.

It is an argument which would appear to be irresistible when addressed to souls that have already ex

perienced His marvelous and ill-deserved goodness to themselves. From such an One, the slightest intimation of a wish has the nature of an all-compelling command.

And yet how many of us have during the past year recognized His claims upon us in any direct effort put forth for the salvation of souls, and this for the hastening of His Kingdom's coming?

It is a most convenient time for examining ourselves in this respect. Does Advent mean to us any more or anything better than it did twelve months ago? Have we sought to take any more of His burden upon us, or to make it any lighter for others to bear? Have we gained any truer idea of what we are and where we are in His Kingdom; of what indeed His Kingdom really signifies?

If so, then as the summons comes to us afresh today, the summons to help Him in His work, to coöperate with Him in fulfilling His Father's will, our answer-if we may venture to take His own sacred words upon our polluted lips-will be ready and glad: “Here am I; send me." "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.”

The summons may not always be to immediate work. There are at times, for some of us at least, periods or seasons of waiting. And this waiting is among the most difficult things laid upon us. It is easier to do something anything: to exert ourselves. Then we seem to be more content. But to have nothing to do save to wait! That tries our faith and patience indeed.

We want to hurry God. It is the spirit of the age. And yet there is hardly anything more marked than the leisurely way in which He goes about His work. Posessed of omniscient wisdom and of unerring impartial

ity, a thousand years appearing in His sight as but a day, and one day as a thousand years, Eternity itself being the measure of His economy-He can never be in a hurry. He is not a God of impulse.

While more anxious than any one of His creatures ever can be to accomplish the number of His elect, and to have His Kingdom manifested in all its beauty and grandeur, He yet delays His coming out of such wisdom and love as we must always recognize and gratefully appreciate.

We are not, therefore, to conclude that, because at times His kingly course appears to us so slow, our services are not as requisite to Him as we had once thought them to be. He still has need of us, and in His own good time and way will afford us the opportunity of aiding Him in His beneficent designs. must tarry the Lord's leisure.†

We

And what a glorious privilege, after all, it is to be "workers together with Him."* What prouder title could possibly be conferred upon us? What coöperation so ennobling as that into which we are thus so graciously admitted?

It is this working together that explains distinctly the wonderful progress made by the Church in her earliest days. Her history as recorded by one of the Evangelists-St. Mark-is exceedingly brief. It is all comprised in a single verse. But the words which he employs are very comprehensive and significant. After stating in equally short terms the fact of our Blessed Lord's ascension, he writes: "And they went forth and

Psalm xxvii: 16. (Prayer-Book Version.)

*II. Corinthians, vi: 1.

preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and conforming the word with signs following."§

First, there was the working together. Then, as of necessity, followed the signs-the wonders, indeed.

This has ever been the Divine law of progress. Let such coöperation be insured, and success is—I say it reverently-compelled. The Lord made the mouth and the hand; yet unless He go with them, man's words and deeds will avail but little.

Trite and easy to be proved as this may be, there is, I fear, a great deal of practical independence of God, even in works undertaken ostensibly in His name.

I am not sure but that the present age is especially marked by this indepedence. If so, it may, perhaps, be attributed to the greater prevalence now-a-days of associations of various kinds. It is, no doubt, the part of wisdom for the Church, utilizing thus far the spirit of the age, to have her sub-organizations in which the zeal and capacity of her members may the better find their aim and scope.

And yet their very success seems at times to endanger our sense of dependence upon God. Too much reliance is placed upon numbers, or upon material resources, and not enough anxiety is felt for His continual and minute guidance and favor.

It has been the failure to recognize the fact that we are only working as needed by Him, and that His constant coöperation is absolutely necessary for their success, which has brought so many of our ecclesiastical societies to a state of languishing activity, if not, indeed, to total extinction.

§St. Mark xvi: 20.