n out to activity and self-denying service
for God and those around them. The highest type of religion is a
combination of the experimental and the practical, the inward and the
outward, the personal and the relative. Our consecration must include
what God can get out of us as well as what we obtain from Him.

I found a parable the other day in a legend of the Greek Church which
is worth repeating. That Church has two favourite saints--St.
Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type
of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus
enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth,
Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon
in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'I was coming
before Thee,' said St. Cassianus, 'and I was afraid of soiling my white
robes'.

Just then St. Nicholas enters Heaven, all covered with mud and mire.
'Why so stained and soiled, St. Nicholas?' said the Lord. 'I saw a
peasant floundering in a marsh,' said St. Nicholas, 'and I put my
shoulder to the wheel, and helped him out'. 'Blessed art thou',
answered the Lord. 'Thou didst well; thou didst better than Cassianus.'
And He blessed St. Nicholas with fourfold approval. The moral is so
obvious that I need not labour the application of my parable.

3. Let me also impress upon you that _covenant-making must be a
believing act_. That is to say, when you come up to the altar of
consecration, and say, 'Here I give my all to Thee', you must believe
that if you are good for your word the Lord is also good for His. So
that what you give, God accepts; what you claim, God gives. That may
appear a very simple way of putting the faith that saves and
sanctifies, but in all its simplicity it is true, for 'He is faithful
who hath promised'.

4. Then comes the all-important _necessity of standing to your
consecration at all costs_. 'Let us join ourselves to the Lord in a
perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.' God wants men and
women who stand to their covenant; who, having made their pledges and
promises, are not turned aside by difficulties or temptations, but say
and mean, as we sing sometimes--

_High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,
Till in life's latest hour I bow,
And bless in death a bond so dear._

In the Book of Judges there is the story of a man named Jephthah. He
made a vow, an