put into play the moral quality which makes a man bigger mentally as well as spiritually. I notice a contemptuous indifference to moral issues, a willingness to let anybody else take trouble, to shift the burden of responsibility on to other shoulders. Thank God this is not all the young manhood of England; but it is part of it-the manhood (save the mark!) which dismisses religion with a sneer, and thinks it is all done with, the manhood which takes life easy when it can, and when it cannot submits to circumstances, or makes another pay for a success which ought never to have been earned so. Lastly, there is a manhood which, without questioning or hesitation, lives the life of the beast. In saying this I speak to you as a man and a brother. Better allude indirectly than directly to such things in the pulpit. It requires a special grace to handle such a theme. The proper place for the sewer is underground. Every young man knows that there is a temptation to live the life of the beast, and some never think of struggling against it at all. There is no humiliation in being tempted. There is no shame in the fierceness of the contest against a passion which you did not create; but the shame is in living below that standard of the manhood which you know is that which you ought to live. Think of the vast army of women in London to-day living a delirious existence in which excitement is called happiness. The end of such things is death. If there were no bad men there could be no bad women. I speak conscientiously when I say that I think on the whole women are better than we are; their spiritual perceptions are quicker; they seem as though they stand naturally nearer to the divine. But when a woman does go wrong, God help

her; for she is usually irreclaimable. Never let it be said of any man here that he forgot that the highest reach of manhood is the protection and not the destruction of the weak. You owe a duty to woman for which you will be held accountable to God.

England needs men to-day as much as she ever needed them in her history. There is a danger that we are falling under the rule of mediocrity in nearly every department of our natural life. Young men, you must change all that. We want strong men, strong with the strength which issues in love; men strong as the Christ was strong, who look to Him, not only as their ideal, but their Master and their God; for the Christ is not dead, and wherever manhood lives the Christ is at work. Listen to the voice with which He spoke to His disciples of old, for that word was eternal, and means much to you and me at this hour:

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Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely, this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

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We love because He first loved us."

ΧΙ

OVERCOMING FOR GOD

Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

-John xvi. 33.

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me on My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne.-Rev. iii, 21.

I

T is fitting that these texts should be taken in con

junction, especially as expressive of our Master's

teaching upon the great subject we are about to consider. For both texts purport to be the utterance of Jesus; if not His very words, then, at least, the expression of His mind and intent. In the first text we have our Lord's example and the ground of our confidence of spiritual victory; in the second we have a call and a promise to him that overcometh of fellowship with Christ and the attainment of that level of saintly experience which can only be described as sitting with Him in His throne. Overcoming is a real thing; overcoming for God is a great thing; progressive spiritual experience reveals it stage by stage and hour by hour.

I. A Man's Reaction upon Life.-It may be well that we should attempt a little change in statement in the first text. The clause "Be of good cheer," beautiful as it is, and redolent with sacred memories, can be more tersely and even forcibly expressed. One word with a note of exclamation after it would do-" Cour

age! I have overcome the world." Courage! The true ring is given to that word when you remember that it was spoken by Jesus Christ in the hour and article of His Passion. He was going to Gethsemane when He said "Courage!" to the disciples. But they were going to no Gethsemane, they were but sorrowing that He was taken from them. The extremity of His agony they did not know, and they withheld sympathy from Him in the hour of His greatest need. "Courage!" said the Master, not thinking about Himself, but about these timid fishermen who depended upon Him for everything. "I have overcome the world." Overcome" is a big word. It means there is something to come over, and getting over it is a thing divine. Even our Master was made perfect through suffering, blessed obstacles, divine agonies; even Christ pleased not Himself. In the supreme moment of His life, the moment of the agony in Gethsemane, and the dereliction of Calvary, His overcoming enabled Him to say, "Courage!" to those who had not the strength and could not share in His experience. There is a massive loneliness about the Christ here. In fact, to speak of it glibly seems out of place; let us rather look into the august countenance of Him who spake as never man spake, and take courage as we think about the battle that He fought in the darkness for us on that awful night when our text was spoken.

"I have overcome the world." What is the world" ? It has several significances in the New Testament. It may mean the sum total of humanity"God so loved the world "-meaning you and me and all mankind. It may mean, as here, something entirely

opposed to God, and which neither God nor you ought to love, the sum total of the tendencies which seek for their gratification here or not at all; the aggregate of the influences which make for the destruction of the higher life; and God in Christ overcame that world. Still, the battle is going on in every individual human life, and it is to this conflict that we are summoned in the words of our second text. See the different ways in which men face this great fact, which all men must face sooner or later, and do something with. Our reaction upon life means something like this. Life comes to every man with certain influences, tendencies, possibilities, menaces, and we have to do something with it. The world is always near; you cannot refuse to enter into relationship with it; what is your reaction upon this sum total of influences which go to make up life? That is the measure of your worth. There are different ways in which men react upon that which we call life; let me give you some examples of them.

1. There is that which I may describe as a shallow optimism, the talk of the man who leaves to other people the deep thinking and the serious action, who looks upon life carelessly, even selfishly, and yet may be written down as a very good fellow. Take as an example Dickens's Horace Skimpole in "Bleak House." You remember that this amiable gentleman was a favourite in certain circles because he brought a ray of sunshine with him wherever he went, a childlike artlessness, an unreflective insouciance. But he left to other people the paying of his bills; and he was able to borrow money with a cunning artlessness which enabled him to get through at somebody else's cost.