know it or not, bound up with that of Jesus Christ. Only once have we seen anyone who could be termed sinless; and the challenge which was given to the world nineteen hundred years ago, when Christ was helpless in the hands of His accusers, to the accusers themselves, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" is the world's hope at this moment. I state a proposition which cannot be proved-nothing worth proving can be proven; and it matters very little-it is this: Sinlessness and Deity involve each other; suffering and humanity involve each other. When we have stated the perfect Man, we have declared a suffering Saviour; when we have spoken about a suffering Saviour, we have declared incarnate God, and, as has been beautifully said, “God became man that man might become God." "He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." If there never had been a Jesus Christ humanity would have been crying out for Him to-day, or for one such as He, to do the work He claims to do. We cannot rise of ourselves from that slough in which we are, however we got there. Sin is intractable, the one problem for which no parliament is sufficient, and with which no human wisdom can cope. Hear it, as the Master preached it, as of old, the only One who ever declared Himself able to loose the bands and let us go free. If Jesus Christ can be proved to have been no Saviour, and to have had no more right to speak in the name of God than the sinful man who addresses you, then it is worse for humanity than if He had never come at all; for until the Dayspring from on high men were looking hopefully forward for someone to come, something from out the mystery to save;

and when Jesus came they thought they had found Him, and for nineteen hundred years we have been preaching the sinless One, by the Story of the Cross, as the One who is mighty to save. If that Gospel were a lie, better there had never been a Jesus; it is worse than if there had been no Gospel to proclaim. When we claim that the Christ is able to save, we look beyond the immediate moment, back into human history, and we hear men say, “He has shown Himself able to keep." Is the Christ, who is humanity, the head and the representative of the best in humanity, the Christ who is our hope, reigning at the heart of things or not? If He is, and this is His world, well it is for you and me! "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him but little lower than God." Taking hold of Christ, he has taken hold of God, and, though all have sinned and come short of His glory, we reign through the merit of the sinless One to all eternity.

Henry Drummond on one occasion was crossing the Atlantic, and on the deck of the vessel on which he was sailing a number of passengers had gathered to sing hymns, as they often do, and the hymn chosen on that evening happened to be "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." As one man sang, another listened to him with considerable interest, and at the close said:

"I feel I have heard your voice before; can you tell me where it was?" "No," said the singer, “but the singing of this hymn recalls to me an interesting event in my life. I was a soldier in the Confederate Army in the great Civil War. I was on outpost duty one night in a lonely place. It was reported that the enemy were in a wood near by. I knew my life was in great

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danger. To keep up my spirits, I sang this hymn, and when I came to the line Cover my defenceless head with the shadow of Thy wing,' it seemed as if all my fears passed away, and I stood for the rest of the night as firm and fearless as though it were daylight. I felt as if my prayer had been answered somehow." "Now," said the other, "you listen to my story. I was an officer in the Northern Army, and that night I was scouting in the wood you mention. That was where I heard your voice, and as you sang 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul,' we were drawing near, not knowing what you sang. When I and my men came within ear-shot you had just reached the words, which you sang out louder than the rest:

and at that moment we had you covered with the muzzles of a dozen rifles. My men were just waiting for the word to send you into eternity, but when you sang that line, I turned to them and said, ' Rifles down; let us go back to camp.'

Here they met, on the deck of a ship in mid-ocean, to tell about the Christ that had governed the act of the one and saved the life of the other. It is a simple story, but it brings me to the point where I would bring every man if I could. You do not feel yourself able for your own life and destiny to say with the soldier:

"Thou, O Christ, art all I want,

More than all in Thee I find,

Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,

Heal the sick, and lead the blind."

You can venture your all upon that Man who leads on before. Still I see Him leading there! At the Cross of Calvary there is life and hope for humanity. What is man? August and abject! What is man? A child of God, a child of shame. What is man? A brother of Christ, the redeemed of the Cross. We need

no more.

"Just and holy is Thy name,

I am all unrighteousness.
False and full of sin I am,

Thou art full of truth and grace."

III

PERSONAL COMMUNION WITH GOD

And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.-Exodus xxxiii. 11.

I'

N this narrative of old time, and particularly in the sentence which forms our text, there is something which is puzzling to the practical Englishman and to the twentieth-century mind. We are nowadays so literal and exact in our statement of truth, and so little tolerant of the too liberal use of metaphor and symbol, that we are apt to hesitate before expressions of spiritual experience which are conveyed in a mental and spiritual dialect different from our own. Moreover, we are impatient of views of the Divine nature which would tend to localise, humanise, or limit God. So far is this the case that even the crude and exaggerated statement of the Godhead of Jesus becomes a serious obstacle to many otherwise religious minds. Hence it is that in reading a narrative like this of the converse which Moses held with God in the tabernacle in the wilderness we are hindered rather than helped by the anthropomorphism-that is, the manlikeness of the aspect under which the Deity is presented to our minds. We ask ourselves, Did Moses speak with God face to face? Did the Lord look with human eyes and speak with human voice to His