re true, it is one thing to avoid direct breaches in
our action of the law of honour, but it is another thing to be in
ourselves absolutely sincere, to look up into the eyes of God, as a
truthful child looks up into the eyes of its mother, to possess our own
hearts like a flawless gem, with nothing to hide, nothing to keep back,
and nothing to be ashamed of--that is to have truth in the inward
parts, and that is what God demands. It is what He found in Christ,
one of the things which made Him say time after time, "This is My
beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased"; He found ever reflecting back
His Face as He looked down upon Him a perfectly sincere Person, true
through and through. That was the secret of His marvellous influence,
that was why little children came and crept under the ample folds of
His love, that was why young men came and told Him their secrets, that
was why everybody, except the bad, felt at home with Him, that was why
women were at their best with Him, that was why Herod the worldly found
he could not flatter Him, and Pilate the coward found Him devoid of
fear; it was because right through, not only in His words and actions,
but in His being He not only had, but He was, Truth in the inward
parts. And it is because our Queen, with her simple and beautiful
faith in her Saviour, caught from childhood this attribute of her Lord,
because she worked it out into her character, made it the foundation of
everything she did--it is for that reason she was able to keep the
Court pure, and the heart of the country true, to get rid of flattery,
meanness and intrigue, and to chase away the sycophant and the traitor.

Is it not a lesson which the country needs, is there any nobler
monument that we could build to her than this--to incorporate into the
character of the nation the first and great characteristic of her own
character, and to try and plant in society, in trade, and in Christian
work, truth in the inward parts?

Take, first, _society_. It is a cheap sneer, which speaks perpetually
of the hollowness of so-called society, as if rich people could not
make and did not make as honest friendships as the poor and middle
class; but, at the same time, few would deny how much of what would be
such a good thing is disfigured by display and insincerity, that
miserable attempting to be thought richer than we are, that pitiable
struggle to get into a smarter set than happens to be ours, the unreal
compliments, the