There can be no failure of God's grace. "We are coworkers with Him," all the failure, all the lack, all the disasters the world suffers in its religious strivings and endeavors, come of you and me and the great army of those who should be toilers in the "kingdom not of this world," standing idly by or lazily lying down, and looking for miracles to do what we ourselves ought to do. Our opportunity is great, our commission to work is very urgent.

Never in history was there so much to do, never such large promises of fruit if we will but do our part; never was the work of doing for God in this world's life so full of interest. If we neglect our part, we shall one day punish ourselves when we discover that the greatest. things in life are the things we have neglected, and that we have spent our best gifts in labors that bring us no

return.

We will not, surely, so select and interpret our part in this world's life. We will go forward, and keep in the forefront of those who are giving the best that is in them, for the filling of this life of ours with the flowers and fruits of the kingdom of heaven.

QUINQUAGESIMA.

THE PASSING OF JESUS.

TEXT: Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.-St. Luke XVIII. 37.

By the REV. V. W. SHIELDS, D. D.,

Rector of St. John's Church, Jacksonville, Fla.

N the services for Lent the Church has grouped together the main facts at the beginning and the end of our Lord's ministry on earth. We find a striking illustration of the meaning and character of that ministry in the Altar Service for this Pre-Lenten Sunday. The Quinquagesima Collect and Epistle teach us that it rescued Love-so long profaned, slighted, forgotten in the earth and restored it to the pre-eminent position that is its right among the virtues of men. The Gospel relates the story of the blind man receiving sight at the word of Christ, the opening of human eyes, which had been so long closed to divine things, to the vision of the son of God-an act which was symbolical of His ministry to man, as it is defined in the saying, "I am come into this world, that they which see not might see."

Jesus had set His face toward Jerusalem for the last time, and begun to tell the Apostles of His approaching Passion: "Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the Prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished."

I

As He leads them
on towards the Holy City,
they come near to Jericho, where a blind beggar
sat by the way, who, hearing the noise of the
multitude, and asking what it meant, was answered,
"Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." Realizing his oppor-
tunity, probably the first that had ever come to him,
he begins to cry with a faith whose wild longing could
not be hushed by reproof, "Jesus, Thou Son of David,
have mercy on me." But Divine Love never passes
by such faith unheeded, and that sad journey to Jeru-
salem, whose ending was to be hallowed by the sorrow
of the ages, is touched up by a manifestation of that
Light which penetrates all the shadows of life; and the
eyes that had been shut in darkness, are opened to the
vision of the sun in the heavens, and the face of the
"Sun of Righteousness."

Therefore, this touching incident, which is fixed in the Gospel for the day, the passing of Jesus by the blind, suggests the scope and purpose of Lent, in which the history of the Atonement is summed up, in which Jesus, and the company that followed Him, through each act of the divine tragedy, pass in review before us. The Church brings it before us as an opportunity which faith must perceive and grasp. How greatly our faith needs the touch of that divine history as it passes by, year after year, in its sweep of the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter! We are all part blind: "Now we see through a glass darkly." We want spiritual vision-eyes opened to plainest facts we see not, though they are before us through life; faith, that will not be slow to take opportunities which often pass unrecognized, or slighted. The incident before us is the story of a fleeting opportunity that came

to a blind man-only, it may have seemed to those who stood by, a chance which happened to him. Divine Love only passed by him. Only once, in a life, passed by the way where he sat to beg. But it came with divine purpose, that he might have one brief asking for mercy, for light! And the persistent cry tells of faith that could not be hushed, that would not let the opportunity, brief though it was, escape; of a desire that had forgotten need of alms and silenced dread of public censure; that was yearning only for vision, that he might see, that he might behold the face of Jesus!

It is an illustration of our necessity, and manifold opportunities, that sometimes seem to come as unmeaning incidents, but behind which lie divine love and purpose. How often does the Master cross our path, ready to hear our cry and open our eyes! The cry of awakened humanity is ever one: "Open Thou mine eyes." Yet, this vision of Christ, as He is presented to us in the Catholic Faith, as He comes near to us in the Church, and in the home, with mercy in His word and gifts in His hand, as He passes by year after year, and moves in history, too often escapes us, and leaves us with eyes still closed. It is a day when men have heaped to themselves many teachers, and multiplied systems and sciences and religions that involve and entrap attention, while faith is slow to perceive the presence and catch the voice of Christ in the Church. Many masters and factions and human causes are clamoring for recognition; and every error and vagary opening into the mind of society, find their ready victims and advocates, in literature and pulpit and forum, that flank the Church on every field. The forces of evil seem to be arrayed with new energy against Christ

and the Church, as if they were set for a final test of the truth and power of the Incarnation.

In the meantime, the opportunities of the average man, and his capacity for thought, meditation and worship, are becoming more and more disturbed and limited by these adverse circumstances of modern life. He is in peril of losing the art for these things of faith. There seems to be a sad displacement of his faculty for reverence, faith and worship, a disturbance and disarrangement of his powers of vision. The vast energies and material enterprise of the age so distract and absorb him, that it is difficult for him to realize the presence of God in his worship, or, indeed, to worship at all. To him the Church is no more the temple of the Most High, where he must tread softly and speak reverently; the accessories of worship, that have divine sanction, appear superstitious; reverence seems formalism; and mystery impractical visionariness. In his conception of worship there is small room for the idea of divine presence, angelic fellowship and sacramental grace; and it becomes a struggle to prevent his religion from lapsing into a practical abandonment of Christianity, without any Incarnation, without Christ!

But the force of the world is mighty, and it must ever be difficult with man to keep faith. The immense scope of its mercantilism, its sharp rivalries, its schools, science, literature move us perpetually. The roar of its commerce and the lustre of its art enchain our interest and fancy. Its wonderful mechanism, its awful dramas, its pitiful tragedies, its wild lyrics stir strange depths within us and fascinate us. The enchantments of the material world, the subtle powers and intellectual splendor of mind, hold us in their spell, and lift us to thought and imagination