hopes, all confidence in other philosophies of salvation, all trust in self-righteousness. If the scale of leprosy be in the hand, will it help it to cut that off? If it be eating out the eyesight, will it heal the malady to pluck out the eyes? Nay; this leprosy is in the blood! Sin is through and through the nerve, sinew, fibre, heart, conscience and soul of man; and in all the world there is no cleansing save at the "fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins." "Come now, saith the Lord, let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

The last lesson is Exact Obedience.

When a man has accepted Christ, all the rest is doing what the Master bids him do. In a word, the Christian life is Obedience. To obey is better than sacrifice. It is not for us to ask our Lord's reasons, but to trust him. "His commands," says Watson, ever carry meat in the mouth of them." Let us live, therefore, according to his holy will; running in the way of his commandments. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it!"

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XVII

OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN

In which he converses with two glorified saints who manifest a deep interest in the affairs of men.

And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, that he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up into the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became white and dazzling. And behold, there talked with him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.-LUKE ix, 28-31.

A BEREAVED Wife recently said to me, I cannot help feeling that my dear husband knows all about my circumstances and is near me. We lived together forty years and our happiness was ideal. Do you suppose that he can be alive anywhere in the universe and not want to come to me? Tell me, is it right to believe that way?" There are multitudes of people who ask the same question; if an affirmative answer could be given, what consolation it would afford those who are passing through the Valley of Tears.

We hear, at the outset, the Testimony of the Heart. The Heart cries aloud and will not be silent, "Come back, O loved and lost, come back and comfort me!" But this is not proof. We want something more positive than the lonely cry and the outstretching of

empty arms. One of our poets has expressed it on this wise:

"Lord, Thou hast conquered death, we know:

Restore again to life," I said,

"This one who died an hour ago."
He smiled: "She is not dead."

"Yet our beloved seem so far,

The while we yearn to feel them near,
Albeit with Thee we trust they are."

He smiled: "And I am here."

"Dear Lord: how shall we know that they
Still walk unseen with us and Thee,

Nor sleep, nor wander far away?"

He smiled: "Abide in me."

We turn from the Testimony of the Heart to that of

Reason. And here we are on dangerous ground; since Reason, of itself alone, is ever an untrustworthy guide in spiritual things. So long as it pursues a straightforward argument from data furnished by the five physical senses it can be trusted; but when it crosses the borders into the province of Faith it becomes a blind leader of the blind. This will account for the many lamentable and often grotesque errors of irreligious men in dealing with the question before us.

There is the error of the Sadducees, those rationalists of the olden time, who, recognizing no authority beyond that of Reason, argued themselves into a practical rejection of the supernatural. They held that life beyond the grave is an empty dream. "Death ends all."

And there is the error of the Pagan Mythologists, who peopled the earth with supernatural beings. Nymphs, Naiads, Oreads and Oceanides, Dryads and Hamadryads, they swarmed through the fields and forests, flitted along the shores of every stream, rode in chariots of clouds and whispered in the winds. This is the reductio ad absurdum of a sublime and helpful truth.

The Romanists, also, by exceeding the bounds of Scripture and following their own imagination, have fallen into the lamentable error of paying divine honors to Angels and "spirits of just men made perfect." This would never have happened had they harkened to the voice of the Angel of the Apocalypse, who, when John fell down to worship before his feet, recoiled in horror, saying, "See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the proph

ets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God" (Rev. xxii, 9).

And scarcely less deplorable is the error into which the Puritans fell, when in their repugnance to Mariolatry and saint-worship they swung to the other extreme and wholly ignored, if not denied, the ministry of saints and Angels. They put the spiritual world afar off, making it a cold and dreary place. Here is a sketch of it:

But the worst error of all is that of the so-called Spiritualists, who profess to call back the departed and converse with them at will; engaging them in foolish and frivolous tricks, with the lights turned down, such as ringing bells in closed cabinets and tipping tables and knocking on hollow walls; inducing them to peep and mutter nonsense beneath the level of dull scholars in our grammar schools. This is not only grotesque; it is hideous and abhorrent to common sense; since, whatever change may have been wrought in our beloved by their transition to the spiritual world, they are certainly not greater fools than they were when they dwelt among us. And whatever may be the ministries on earth, we have no reason to believe that they can be summoned at pleasure or conversed