comes more clear and more
stringent. 'If any man will do His will' the reward shall be that he
will see more and more the altitude of that will, the length and breadth
and depth and height of the possible conformity of the human spirit to
the will of God. And so as we advance in obedience we shall see
unreached advances before us, and each new step of progress will declare
more fully how much still remains to be accomplished. In us the 'old
commandment' will become ever new.

And not only so, but perpetually with the increasing sweep and
stringency of the obligation will be felt an increasing sense of our
failure to fulfil it. Character is built up, for good or for evil, by
slow degrees. Conscience is quickened by being listened to, and stifled
by being neglected. A little speck of mud on a vestal virgin's robe, or
on a swan's plumage, will be conspicuous, while a splash twenty times
the size will pass unnoticed on the rags of some travel-stained
wayfarer. The purer we become, the more we shall know ourselves to be
impure.

Thus, my brother, there opens out before us an endless course in which
all the blessedness that belongs to the entertaining and preservation of
ancient convictions, lifelong friends, and familiar truths, and all the
antithetical blessedness that belongs to the joy of seeing, rising upon
our horizon as some new planet with lustrous light, will be united in
our experience. We shall at once be conservative and progressive;
holding by the old Christ and the old commandment, and finding that both
have in them endless novelty. The trunk is old; every summer brings
fresh leaves. And at last we may hope to come to the new Jerusalem, and
drink the new wine of the Kingdom, and yet find that the old love
remains, and that the new Christ, whose presence makes the new heavens
and the new earth, is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' the
old Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.

YOUTHFUL STRENGTH

'I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the
word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked
one.'--1 John ii. 14.

'What am I going to be?' is the question that presses upon young people
stepping out of the irresponsibilities of childhood into youth. But,
unfortunately, the question is generally supposed to be answered when
they have fixed upon a trade or profession. It means, rightly taken, a
great deal more than tha