beings from slavery. A boxer uprising in China, in 1900, as an ignorant protest against western civilization, becomes the means of witnessing the Christian devotedness even unto death of thousands of Chinamen, and of bringing China into such vital contact with western powers that within a single decade she makes more innovations than in the previous millennium.

Fifty years ago Darwin gave to the world his thesis of Evolution. His immediate theory may not be accepted today, but the great principle of development has been universally accepted. For a long time theologians stood aghast, thinking that the very undermining of religion was here assured. But all unexpectedly the new science of recognizing development in all spheres of matter and spirit in the universe, has revealed a God infinitely more majestic than ever was conceived of before, and the teaching of the Divine Saviour appears more sublime and compelling than ever. So the historical study of the Bible is being girded of. God for the taking of His revelation into the very hearts of men.

In the terrific storm of this hour of world war, can be seen the rainbow. Hell has been turned loose. But God stands "In the shadow, keeping watch above His own." With despotism overthrown in Russia, with half a world ready to die for liberty, who can fail to sense the new spirit of democracy? The hour has struck. God says, “I'm tired of kings.' The common man counts for more

than ever before. The nations are dedicating themselves for international brotherhood. They engage in the most frightful war of history that war shall "He maketh the wrath of man to

be no more. praise Him."

3. At every angle of our human lives appears the silken strand of God's unsuspecting girding.

There is something mysteriously sublime about the regular appearance of Halley's comet. Titanic gathering of spheroidal dust, nascent form of yet unborn planets, like some wandering searchlight of unearthly proportions, the expanse of the huge beam of light now and again through long ages, had cut through our earthly heavens, casting terror to the hearts of our ancestors long ago, then as suddenly disappearing. Tradition says that some of earth's greatest have appeared coincidentally with this translucent sun. Cæsar, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror each was ushered in by this majestic light. Appearing in the heavens for a while, the far visitor steals far away. The new-born babe passes through childhood, youth, maturity, and now with the whitened hair and tottering steps is not long for earth, when lo, after an absence of five and seventy years, the same faint far light appears on the horizon, growing ever brighter and steadier, as if once more it would usher the babe of yesterday into a birthday yet more splendid! As this comet appears so regularly and yet so unexpectedly to the unsuspecting, so the light of God's unsuspected purpose seems to bind us every way about in our human

careers.

How innumerable are the pathways through which divine purposes are displayed! Verily, as we look into and back upon our careers every man's life appears a plan of God, and, if we take by-paths for ourselves, He so patiently makes His path cross again and again as if He would say: "This is the way, walk ye in it."

Notice the unsuspected purposes that underlie all our daily living. Heredity is the most universal of all human assets. Yet not all have the same physical, intellectual, or financial heritage. But these initial endowments tell very largely in determining the direction and height of our attainment. Often greatness in the son can be explained by the greatness in the parents. Witness music and poetry in the Lanier family, eloquence in the Randolphs, military genius among the Lees, science in the Darwins and Lecontes, and legal excellence in the Lamars. Paul recognizes the value of heritage in religion. How earnestly he exhorted Timothy to be worthy of his sweet Christian mother and grandmother.

Temperament and gifts God gives to us without our choosing and He sets them as guide posts pointing the way to the work of the farmer, the merchant, the banker, the lawyer, the teacher, the nurse, the home-maker, the minister, the artist, the poet. Training and education He gives for making the most of heritage and gifts. And right here do we see how beneficently He has girded us against the effect of bad heritage. He makes possible by

proper surrounding to keep under and counteract evil tendencies in our nature.

Struggle against hardship and failure does God use as the means of girding to greater richness and strength. Here is a disappointed young teacher, Phillips Brooks, but how he was girded for a monumental success. Here is David Livingstone, refused license for preaching because of his poor exhibition of himself; but yonder he goes, the first explorer of his time, carrying the beam of Christlight through the midnight of a dark continent. How sadly John Milton sang of his lost eyesight, yet what glorious visions he could see in the paradise of God. Tennyson and Carlyle were once looking upon a bust of Dante and Goethe. "What is there in Dante's face that you miss in Goethe's?" "God," answered Carlyle, without a moment of hesitation. Yes, it was God, and God he found in the bitter loneliness of exile.

Out of the very train of circumstances so often come results little dreamed of. A Hebrew boy, sent to his brothers by his father, is treacherously sold as a slave and taken to a foreign land. There is evidenced here only a life of hardship and misery. But lo, this slave lad becomes the saviour of a nation and the blessing of the very brothers who betrayed him. A Hebrew mother hides her little babe in a basket in the midst of the river flags because she loves him, and the deliverer of an enslaved people one future day has given him a dwelling among the palaces of the king. A letter

from a college mate, Secretary of the Shang-Hai Y. M. C. A., reports that a party of Los Angeles travellers passed through Shang-Hai. The letter reveals how a casual visitor through a willing heart and pocketbook was the means, under God, of saving an important Christian enterprise. The Christian traveller from California little realized that the great purpose of his trip was with God to do just that very thing. The same thing is true in church enterprises. God often puts it in the way of man to do for a church what he little expected to do.

Indeed, we do not know what part of our life, what of the things we have done or shall do, will tell most upon the sum of things. It is often when we are doing a thing we least understand, when on the track that seems a blind one, that the issues are the greatest.

Even the by-products of our lives are girded for telling purposes. With some, it has been a difficult thing to discover what was their real life task and what was the incidental thing. In some, there has been such a splendour and variety of gift that we are left to wonder where their chief interest lay. What shall we call Benjamin Franklin? Was he a printer, agriculturist, journalist, great organizer, statesman? Was he not also the first electrician of his age? Verily, it is difficult to determine where his vocation leaves off and where his avocation begins. Cardinal Newman produced countless essays and sermons, but he doubtless will be remembered