o be far
greater than their human conception of it. What, then, are our Advent
hopes?

There are two things which we should keep clear in our minds concerning
them. One, that they must be based upon our feeling of the living
influence of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit; and the other is
that the voices of the Spirit must come to us out of the needs of our own
life and of the time we live in if they are to lead us to practical
issues. When we look out upon the world and its life we feel that Advent
hopes must take some new form if they are to preserve reality and to be
fulfilled.

We see decaying faith in some quarters, and selfishness growing where
faith decays; we see ignorance and want and all their crop of sin and
misery deep-rooted in the life of every city; and the prospect which
these things suggest, the problems that meet us as we think of them,
might well fill us with misgiving. And they would indeed do so were it
not for the fact that the revelation of such things brings with it
another revelation also; it seizes on men's souls and stirs them as with
a Divine summons. And thus we have these hopeful signs for the future
rising around us, even where things look darkest, that the great problems
of humanity are felt in our day to be above all things its social and
religious problems. And seeing that the aspirations of the time--the
feelings, the purposes, the aims, and hopes that lift men--grow out of
the needs of the time and the problems of its life, we look forward--we
have good ground for looking forward--to a generation of men who shall be
distinguished by religious earnestness and by social enthusiasm.

But if this be so, what will your share be in this coming life? The
Spirit of God, as we now understand it, comes to us with calls of this
kind.

If you would hasten the Advent of Christ in your own soul and in the
souls of others, you must discard selfishness, you must rise above self-
indulgence, you must prepare to merge yourself in the social life, for
the social good; seeing that the growth of this good is the only sure and
certain sign of the coming of the Lord. So, then, the Angel of the
Advent is thus calling us. The future before you is big with social and
religious issues, and the Spirit of Christ is brooding over it, and you
and such as you are to be His chosen instruments in helping forward these
issues.

XVIII. SPIRITUAL POWER.

"And behold I send _the promi