to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The
Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most
anxious people in the world are Christians--Christians who misunderstand
the nature of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they
are not growing. And the effect is not only the loss of tranquillity to
the individual. The energies which are meant to be spent on the work of
Christ are consumed in the soul's own fever. So long as the Church's
activities are spent on growing there is nothing to spare for the world.
A soldier's time is not spent in earning the money to buy his armor, in
finding food and raiment, in seeking shelter. His king provides these
things that he may be the more at liberty to fight his battles. So, for
the soldier of the Cross all is provided. His Government has planned to
leave him free for the Kingdom's work.

The problem of the Christian life finally is simplified to this--man has
but to preserve the right attitude. To abide in Christ, to be in
position, that is all. Much work is done on board a ship crossing the
Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship go. The sailor but
harnesses his vessel to the wind. He puts his sail and rudder in
position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates, man
utilizes. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of
energies already there.[54] God gives the wind, and the water, and the
heat; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel
in the way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam; and so
holding himself in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of
Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river
whose leaf is green and whose fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson
to be learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of Nature
echoing the whole evangel of Jesus, "Come unto Me, and I will give you
rest."

FOOTNOTES:

[53] University Sermons, pp. 234-241.

[54] See Bushnell's "New Life."

DEATH.

"What could be easier than to form a catena of the most
philosophical defenders of Christianity, who have exhausted language
in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intellect? Comte has
not more explicitly enounced the incapacity of man to deal with the
Absolute and the Infinite than the whole series of orthodox writers.
Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the