His cross in vain. He is up there with the outstretched arms, up there with the bleeding brows. Empty hands you bring him-empty hands and empty hearts. You speak to Him of love, and there is no love in your bosoms; you call Him by sweet names your Redeemer, your Brother, your Lover, and the like, and there is really no meaning in what you say. No meaning, none! And thus does it come to pass that now, as once before, He has nothing for it but to turn aside His poor patient face, and to sob out again, but with a new significance in His words, "Father! forgive them, they know not what they do."

And, my Brethren, further still, though you were callous-hearted to the core, closed up against the entry of love, or gratitude, or pity, there is yet another side to your nature where our Christian religion, give it but fair play, must make short work with your tepidity. If you can be without the faculty of love, you cannot be without the capacity of fear. And our religion tells you things that, if you only think of them, must make you fear to some purpose. For is it not a plain truth that each one of you here for the express end of serving God; that God's service is a man's chief business, in a sense his only business here below. Is it not true that each man has gotten from our Lord, the King, twelve hours' work to do with just twelve hours wherein to do it? Is it not true that, when the twelve hours are over, the night will come, and Death, the King's messen

is

ger, will be here; and whether the work be done or not, the worker will be taken from earthly sight, and his earthly place will know him no more? Is it not true, true as death and the grave, that if his work have been unfinished, there is but one home for him thereafter, and that home in a fire that can never die? These are among the commonest religious truths, the big placarded beliefs which he that runs may read. And what I specially insist on here is, that they are truths easily taken into a man's heart, and, once taken in, certain to do God's lasting work. And what I specially complain of is, that you have never tried to take them into your hearts at all. You have never put yourselves face to face with that great, flaming, hissing, devouring hell! You have never brought it home to yourselves with anything like living earnestness, that at your very best you will get it hard to escape its jaws! You have never realized this startling fact that, in these horrid jaws, better men than you have disappeared, are disappearing, will disappear even till the sun be turned into blood! You have never had your brain and heart full of this other fact, quite as startling, that hell has its missionaries, its spies, its leaders, its fighting-men, all strong, all subtle, all keen, all leagued and banded together for one sole purpose— to bring each one of you-we all know where! You have never realized all this, I say; for, O my Brothers! had you done this, or a tithe of this, would not your lives be one great rush forward from the woe to

come? Would you not now and always be calling on God's name, and clinging to God's feet for pity," and mercy, and protection? And then, I think, there would be little languor, or listlessness, or coldness, or tepidity any more.

Yet one step further with this thought of Catholic shortcoming to remember what we are, this want so almost universal of bringing home heartily the meaning of what we believe. There is yet another doctrine, not perhaps plainer than those I have been mentioning, but, of a certainty, more at the bottom of man's earthly life, and that is the doctrine of God's presence in every place. Here, and everywhere, is the Lord. "His eyes are upon the ways of men, and He considereth all their steps." "If I go into heaven He is there; if I descend into hell He is there; if I take the wings of the morning and fly to earth's remotest parts, still will His right hand uphold me.” But this plain truth, so plain that it stared up in the face of even the blear-eyed Pagans, is not recognized, is ignored. Is God in His world, I ask? Is He here before me, and there in the midst of you ? Is His awful holiness side by side with your awful sin ? And if, as I think certain, you will answer yes, then, I say, O ye that have God beside ye! is not the ground that ye stand on holy, and is not your fittest posture, therefore, the posture of Moses before the bush, kneeling, trembling, speechless adoration ? That always! for always was the earth God's footstool; but if that always, what now?-now when

God's human feet have trod our earth a life-time, when God's human body and blood and bones have been in our midst for eighteen-hundred years! Are ye not, of a verity, doing your best to give the lie to Scripture? For, whatever might be said of God's work in the world before Jesus was made our brother, did not the Prophet say that at His coming, the wilderness should blossom as the rose? But ye

why, these hearts of yours which should be so many rose-gardens of sweet smell before the Lord ye have turned into so many wildernesses where no flower blooms, and no spring is seen!

cause.

This, then, my Brethren, is the bare truth,-that of the little earnestness which marks your religious lives, what I call the main blindness of to-day-your own indolent acceptance of words for things-is the And such being the cause of the disease, the process of cure is very plain. If you have been tepid in the Lord's service because you have not taken to heart the teachings of your faith, then ponder upon these teachings, and you will be tepid no more. That is obviously your only course. Anything like hearty earnestness is impossible until your heart gives the impulse; and in the present case such an impulse will be given only by a strong mastering conviction that whatever else you lose, you must not lose your soul. And I have no knowledge of any way for generating such a conviction (I speak of God's ordinary dispensation), except the good old way of honestly looking things in the face. Just bring home

for a moment what life means, or what death means, or what judgment means, or what hell means, and I do not think you are likely to be long without such conviction.

And behold here how our Blind Beggar starts up from his way-side to give you help! In his poor story you cannot fail of seeing what you are to do. He shouted out for mercy, the Scripture says, and being rebuked, shouted out the more. And then, behold what follows! Whereas, in the case of those who presented themselves for cure, it was the Saviour's wont to question them of their faith and trust in Him, of the beggar He makes no such inquiry. Nor was such inquiry needed; the man's faith was written in his face, burning through his words. And therefore does Jesus say only this, "What wilt thou that I do for thee?" perforce admitting that to such earnestness as the beggar's there was nothing He could refuse.

Take you unto heart the lesson the blind man teaches. Jesus, perhaps, is passing now, and God knows but it is His last time to come your road. And the beggar tells you to shout out for mercy, heedless whether you be rebuked or reprimanded. Rebuked and reprimanded you probably enough will be. Unbelievers will sneer at your earnestness as unworthy our very finished, and placid, and enlightened times. Catholics will call you hypocrites because your strong work for God puts their own pitiful lip-service to shame. Never mind; let them walk in their selected

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