nestness of tone-by the devouring study of all kinds of books -by the waning of your own influence, while the inquirer is asking the truth of the doctors and teachers in the vast temple of the world-by a certain opinionativeness, which is austere and disagreeable enough; but the austerest moment of the fruit's taste is that in which it is passing from greenness into ripeness. If you wait in patience, the sour will become sweet. Rightly looked at, that opinionativeness is more truly anguish: the fearful solitude of feeling the insecurity of all that is human; the discovery that life is real, and many forms of social and religious existence hollow. The old moorings are torn away, and the soul is drifting, drifting, drifting, very often without compass, except the guidance of an unseen hand, into the vast infinite of God. Then come the lonely words, and no wonder, "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ?".

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2. That solitude was felt by Christ in trial. In the desert, in Pilate's judgment-hall, in the garden, He was aloneand alone must every son of man meet his trial-hour. The individuality of the soul necessitates that. Each man is a new soul in this world; untried, with a boundless possible before him. No one can predict what he may become, prescribe his duties, or mark out his obligations. Each man's own nature has its own peculiar rules; and he must take up his life-plan alone, and persevere in it in a perfect privacy with which no stranger intermeddleth. Each man's temptations are made up of a host of peculiarities, internal and external, which no other mind can measure. You are tried alone-alone you pass into the desert-alone you must bear and conquer in the agony-alone you must be sifted by the world. There are moments known only to a man's own self, when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence" yearning for a morrow which shall free him from the strife." And there are trials more terrible than that. Not when vicious inclinations are opposed to holy, but when virtue conflicts with virtue, is the real rending of the soul in twain. A temptation in which the lower nature struggles for mastery can be met by the whole united force of the spirit. But it is when obedience to a heavenly Father can be only paid by disobedience to an earthly one; or fidelity to duty can be only kept by infidelity to some entangling engagement; or the straight path must be taken over the misery of others; or the counsel of the affectionate friend must be met with a "Get thee behind me, Satan," oh, it is then, when human advice is unavailable, that the soul feels what it is to be alone.

Once more the Redeemer's soul was alone in dying. The hour had come-they were all gone, and He was, as He predicted, left alone. All that is human drops from us in that hour. Human faces flit and fade, and the sounds of the world become confused. "I shall die alone"-yes, and alone you live. The philosopher tells us that no atom in creation touches another atom-they only approach within a certain distance; then the attraction ceases, and an invisible something repels-they only seem to touch. No soul touches another soul except at one or two points; and those chiefly external-a fearful and a lonely thought, but one of the truest of life. Death only realizes that which has been the fact all along. In the central deeps of our being we are alone.

II. The spirit or temper of that solitude.

1. Observe its grandeur. I am alone, yet not alone. There is a feeble and sentimental way in which we speak of the Man of Sorrows. We turn to the cross, and the agony, and the loneliness, to touch the softer feelings, to arouse compassion. You degrade that loneliness by your compassion. Compassion! compassion for Him! Adore if you will-respect and reverence that sublime solitariness with which none but the Father was-but no pity; let it draw out the firmer and manlier graces of the soul. Even tender sympathy seems out of place.

For even in human things, the strength that is in a man can be only learnt when he is thrown upon his own resources and left alone. What a man can do in conjunction with others does not test the man. Tell us what he can do alone. It is one thing to defend the truth when you know that your audience are already prepossessed, and that every argument will meet a willing response; and it is another thing to hold the truth when truth must be supported, if at all, alone-met by cold looks and unsympathizing suspicion. It is one thing to rush on to danger with the shouts and the sympathy of numbers; it is another thing when the lonely chieftain of the sinking ship sees the last boatful disengage itself, and folds his arms to go down into the majesty of darkness, crushed, but not subdued.

Such and greater far was the strength and majesty of the Saviour's solitariness. It was not the trial of the lonely hermit. There is a certain gentle and pleasing melancholy in the life which is lived alone. But there are the forms of nature to speak to him, and he has not the positive opposition of mankind if he has the absence of actual sympathy. It is a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from men, and to feel

eternity rushing by like an arrowy river. But the solitude of Christ was the solitude of a crowd. In that single human bosom dwelt the thought which was to be the germ of the world's life: a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected. Can you not feel the grandeur of those words, when the Man reposing on His solitary strength, felt the last shadow of perfect isolation pass across His soul: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?"

Next, learn from these words self-reliance. "Ye shall leave me alone." Alone, then, the Son of man was content to be. He threw Himself on His own solitary thought; did not go down to meet the world, but waited, though it might be for ages, till the world should come round to Him. He appealed to the future; did not aim at seeming consistent; left His contradictions unexplained; "I came from the Father, I leave the world, and go to the Father." "Now," said they, "thou speakest no proverb"-that is, enigma. But many a hard and enigmatical saying before He had spoken, and He left them all. A thread runs through all true acts, stringing them together into one harmonious chain; but it is not for the Son of God to be anxious to prove their consistency with each other.

This is self-reliance-to repose calmly on the thought which is deepest in our bosoms, and be unmoved if the world will not accept it yet. To live on your own convictions against the world is to overcome the world; to believe that what is truest in you is true for all; to abide by that, and not be over-anxious to be heard or understood, or sympathized with, certain that at last all must acknowledge the same, and that while you stand firm, the world will come round to you, that is independence. It is not difficult to get away into retirement, and there live upon your own convictions; nor is it difficult.to mix with men, and follow their convictions; but to enter into the world, and there live out firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience, that is Christian greatness.

There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently. We ask what men will think-what others will say whether they will not stare in astonishment. Perhaps they will; but he who is calculating that, will accomplish nothing in this life. The Father-the Father who is with us and in us-what does He think? God's work can not be done without a spirit of independence. A man is got some way in the Christian life when he has learned to say humbly and yet majestically, "I dare to be alone."

Lastly, remark the humility of this loneliness. Had the Son of man simply said, I can be alone, He would have said no more than any proud, self-relying man can say. But when he added, "because the Father is with me," that independence assumed another character, and self-reliance became only another form of reliance upon God. Distinguish between genuine and spurious humility. There is a false humility which says, "It is my own poor thought, and I must not trust it. I must distrust my own reason and judgment, because they are my own. I must not accept the dictates of my own conscience, for it is not my own, and is not trust in self the great fault of our fallen nature ?”

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Very well. Now remember something else. There is a Spirit which beareth witness with our spirits; there is a God who "is not far from any one of us;" there is a Light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world." Do not be unnaturally humble. The thought of your mind, perchance, is the thought of God. To refuse to follow that may be to disown God. To take the judgment and conscience of other men to live by, where is the humility of that? From whence did their conscience and judgment come? Was the fountain from which they drew exhausted for you? If they refuse like you to rely on their own conscience, and you rely upon it, how are you sure that it is more the mind of God than your own which you have refused to hear?

Look at it in another way. The charm of the words of great men-those grand sayings which are recognized as true as soon as heard-is this, that you recognize them as wisdom which has passed across your own mind. You feel that they are your own thoughts come back to you, else you would not at once admit them: "All that floated across me before, only I could not say it, and did not feel confident enough to assert it, or had not conviction enough to put it into words." Yes, God spoke to you what He did to them: only they believed it, said it, trusted the Word within them, and you did not. Be sure that often when you say, "It is only my own poor thought, and I am alone," the real correcting thought is this, "Alone, but the Father is with me;" therefore I can live that lonely conviction.

There is no danger in this, whatever timid minds may think-no danger of mistake, if the character be a true one. For we are not left in uncertainty in this matter. It is given us to know our base from our noble hours to distinguish between the voice which is from above, and that which speaks from below, out of the abyss of our animal and selfish nature. Samuel could distinguish between the impulse,

quite a human one, which would have made him select Eliab out of Jesse's sons, and the deeper judgment by which "the Lord said, Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature, for I have refused him." Doubtless deep truth of character is required for this; for the whispering voices get mixed together, and we dare not abide by our own thoughts, because we think them our own, and not God's; and this because we only now and then endeavor to know in earnest. It is only given to the habitually true to know the difference. He knew it, because all His blessed life long He could say, "My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him which sent me.

The practical result and inference of all this is a very simple, but a very deep one-the deepest of existence. Let life be a life of faith. Do not go timorously about, inquiring what others think, what others believe, and what others say. It seems the easiest, it is the most difficult thing in life, to do this-believe in God. God is near you. Throw yourself fearlessly upon Him. Trembling mortal, there is an unknown might within your soul which will wake when you command it. The day may come when all that is human, man and woman, will fall off from you, as they did from Him. Let His strength be yours. Be independent of them all now. The Father is with you. Look to Him, and He will save you.

XVI.

THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE TO ONE

ANOTHER.

"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."—John xiii. 34.

THESE words derive impressiveness from having been spoken immediately before the last Supper, and on the eve of the great Sacrifice: the commandment of love issued appropriately at the time of the Feast of Love, and not long before the great Act of Love. For the love of Christ was no fine saying: it cost Him His life to say these words with meaning, "As I have loved you.'

There is a difficulty in the attempt to grasp the meaning of this command, arising from the fact that words change their meaning. Our Lord affixed a new significance to the word love: it had been in use, of course, before, but the new sense in which He used it made it a new word.