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longest by his loved "Lead, Kindly Light." "One wonders how Paul compared his epistles with the other output of his life. How small an output were these letters, dashed off in the heat of controversy and distractions of travel and other work, and yet it was by the girding of these that his name was to live. It was these scraps from his pen that were to build up doctrine and to furnish the pulpit with texts for centuries." So does God use our daily companionships and pursuits for purposes far greater than we ever conceived.

Even the turning of the pages of a book is fraught, under God's girding, with tremendous possibilities. Amid the classic shades of Christ College, Oxford, which have been, and were to be illuminated by the presence of Sir Philip Sydney, Locke, Camden, Ben Jonson, Wellington, Peel, Ruskin, and Gladstone, there studied an eager band of youth in the religiously dead days of the early eighteenth century. One of these youths chanced to read William Law's "Serious Call," and John Wesley went forth as a flaming evangel to kindle anew fires of religious devotion, and became one of the greatest forces of Christian history.

Spanish annals record many romantic stories, but none more adventurous nor entrancing than that of the gay young cavalier who was wounded at Pampeluna and for weeks lay abed while his broken leg was mending. Into his hands fell a book, "The Lives of the Saints." Because he read these pages,

the soldier of fortune was transformed into a soldier of religion, and Ignatius Loyola gave the Roman Catholic Church the powerful society of the Order of the Jesuits.

Our discussion suffices to show that there is nothing in history, nothing in nature, nothing in our individual lives that does not throb with the very purposes of God. The ancient confession of the Psalmist is still the wisest expression of modern philosophy, modern experience, modern science: "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me." All splendid visions, all great endeavours, all isolated events, all intricate problems, all successes, all failures and sorrows and troubles are strands, necessary strands of the mighty garment of destiny woven by the purpose of God. Man's necessity is God's opportunity.

What a well-spring of comfort, what a dynamo of power, is the voice of the Eternal, whispering in regard to all of the small things as well as the great things of the universe and of our individual lives: "I have girded thee, though thou hast not known me."

Our part is to recognize and to act upon the reality of these unsuspected divine purposes in a twofold degree-His unsuspected purposes in the extraordinary things of life and in the ordinary things. This recognition shall be achieved by culti

vating the spirit of Sidney Lanier as he looked out over the marshes of Glynn on the Carolina coast:

"As the marsh-hen secretly builds in the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest in the greatness of God.
I will fly in the greatness of God, as the marsh-hen flies,
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and
the skies.

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends into the watery sod,

I will heartily lay me a-hold of the greatness of God."

"

III

CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIAN

ENTERPRISE

And there are also many other things, which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written."-JOHN 21:25.

W

ILLIAM HAZLITT, in his essay "Of

Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," represents this topic as having been suggested by Charles Lamb in the literary club of which they were the centre. One suggested, "I suppose the first two persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke." With impatience restrained by courtesy, Lamb stammered, "Yes, the greatest names but they were not persons-not persons." "Not persons?" "That is, not characters. By Mr. Locke and Mr. Isaac Newton you mean the Essay on Human Understanding' and the 'Principia' which we have to this day. But beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals more than we can learn from their writings. I dare say Locke and

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Newton were very much like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint Shakespeare?" Lamb had no wish to see Shakespeare, because he had seen so much of him on the stage and bookstalls and mantel-pieces that he was heartily tired. Milton he did not desire to see because his picture showed him too stiff and puritanical. Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, he would have been pleased to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown and slippers, because of a certain air of mystery which they breathed. Chaucer was desired by the company, but not Spencer because the bringing in of the individual might rob his romantic poetry of its charm. The Wandering Jew was set aside as spurious, while Columbus was left to the new world. Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Fielding, and Richardson were called for. "There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that anyone expressed the least desire to see-Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John Bunyan." It seemed that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him and that each person would nod under his golden cloud "nigh sphered in heaven,” a canopy as strange and stately as any in Homer. Leonardo was presented with majestic beard and watchful eye. Raphael's graceful head and Michael Angelo and Titian were beheld. When Julius Cæsar, Alexander, Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan were suggested, "Excuse me," said Lamb. "On the subject of plotters and disturbers of the world I

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