tianity true: therefore so do they. He calls this doctrine essential: they echo it. Some thousands of years ago, men communed with God: they have heard this and are content it should be so. They have heard with the hearing of the ear, that God is love-that the ways of holiness are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace. But a hearsay belief saves not. The Corinthian philosophers heard Paul, the Pharisees heard Christ. How much did the ear convey? To thousands exactly nothing. He alone believes truth who feels it. He alone has a religion whose soul knows by experience that to serve God and know Him is the richest treasure. And unless Truth come to you, not in word only, but in power besides-authoritative because true, not true because authoritative-there has been no real revelation made to you from God.

3. Truth is not discoverable by the heart-"neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

The heart-two things we refer to this source: the power of imagining, and the power of loving.

Imagination is distinct from the mere dry faculty of reasoning. Imagination is creative-it is an immediate intuition; not a logical analysis we call it popularly a kind of inspiration. Now imagination is a power of the heart. Great thoughts originate from a large heart: a man must have a heart, or he never could create.

It is a grand thing, when in the stillness of the soul, thought bursts into flame, and the intuitive vision comes like an inspiration; when breathing thoughts clothe themselves in burning words, winged as it were with lightning; or when a great law of the universe reveals itself to the mind of Genius, and where all was darkness, his single word bids Light be, and all is order where chaos and confusion were before. Or when the truths of human nature shape themselves forth in the creative fancies of one like the myriad-minded poet, and you recognize the rare power of heart which sympathizes with, and can reproduce all that is found in man.

But all this is nothing more than what the material man can achieve. The most ethereal creations of fantastic fancy were shaped by a mind that could read the life of Christ, and then blaspheme the Adorable. The truest utterances, and some of the deepest ever spoken, revealing the unrest and the agony that lie hid in the heart of man, came from one whose life was from first to last selfish. The highest astronomer of this age, before whose clear eye Creation lay revealed in all its perfect order, was one whose spirit refused

to recognize the Cause of causes. The mighty heart of Genius had failed to reach the things which God imparts to a humble spirit.

There is more in the heart of man-it has the power of affection. The highest moment known on earth by the merely natural, is that in which the mysterious union of heart with heart is felt. Call it friendship-love-what you will, that mystic blending of two souls in one, when self is lost and found again in the being of another, when, as it were, moving about in the darkness and loneliness of existence, we suddenly come in contact with something, and we find that spirit has touched spirit. This is the purest, serenest ecstasy of the merely human-more blessed than any sight that can be presented to the eye, or any sound that can be given to the ear: more sublime than the sublimest dream ever conceived by genius in its most gifted hour, when the freest way was given to the shaping spirit of imagination.

This has entered into the heart of man, yet this is of the lower still. It attains not to the things prepared by God, it dimly shadows them. Human love is but the faint type of that surpassing blessedness which belongs to those who love God.

II. We pass, therefore, to the nature and laws of Revelation.

First, Revelation is made by a Spirit to a spirit-"God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit." Christ is the voice of God without the man-the Spirit is the voice of God within the man. The highest revelation is not made by Christ, but comes directly from the universal Mind to our minds. Therefore, Christ said Himself, "He, the Spirit, shall take of mine and shall show it unto you." And therefore it is written here "The Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God."

Now the Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the soul of man-ever around and near. On the outside of earth man stands with the boundless heaven above him: nothing between him and space-space around him and above him —the confines of the sky touching him. So is the spirit of man to the Spirit of the Ever Near. They mingle. In every man this is true. The spiritual in him, by which he might become a recipient of God, may be dulled, deadened by a life of sense, but in this world never lost. All men are not spiritual men, but all have spiritual sensibilities which might awake. All that is wanted is to become conscious of the

nearness of God. God has placed men here to feel after Him if haply they may find Him, albeit He be not far from any one of them. Our souls float in the immeasurable ocean of Spirit. God lies around us: at any moment we might be conscious of the contact.

The condition upon which this self-revelation of the Spirit is made to man is love. These things are "prepared for them that love Him," or, which is the same thing, revealed to those who have the mind of Christ.

Let us look into this word love. Love to man may mean several things. It may mean love to his person, which is very different from himself, or it may mean simply pity. Love to God can only mean one thing: God is a Character. To love God is to love His character. For instance-God is Purity. And to be pure in thought and look; to turn away from unhallowed books and conversation, to abhor the moment in which we have not been pure, is to love God.

God is love and to love men till private attachments have expanded into a philanthropy which embraces all-at last even the evil and enemies, with compassion—that is to love God. God is truth. To be true, to hate every form of falsehood, to live a brave, true, real life, that is to love God. God is Infinite; and to love the boundless, reaching on from grace to grace, adding charity to faith, and rising upward ever to see the Ideal still above us, and to die with it unattained, aiming insatiably to be perfect even as the Father is perfect, that is love to God.

This love is manifested in obedience; love is the life of which obedience is the form. "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings." Now here can be no mistake. Nothing can be love to God which does not shape itself into obedience. We remember the anecdote of the Roman commander who forbade an engagement with the enemy, and the first transgressor against whose prohibition was his own son. He accepted the challenge of the leader of the other host, met, slew, spoiled him, and then in triumphant feeling carried the spoils to his father's tent. But the Roman father refused to recognize the instinct which prompted this as deserving of the name of love; disobedience contradicted it, and deserved death:-weak sentiment, what was it worth?

So with God: strong feelings, warm expressions, varied internal experience co-existing with disobedience, God counts not as love. Mere weak feeling may not usurp that sacred

name.

To this love, adoring and obedient, God reveals His truth -for such as love it is prepared: or rather, by the wellknown Hebrew inversion, such are prepared for it. Love is the condition without which revelation does not take place. As in the natural, so in the spiritual world: By compliance with the laws of the universe, we put ourselves in possession of its blessings. Obey the laws of health, and you obtain health: temperance, sufficiency of light and air, and exercise, these are the conditions of health. Arm yourselves with the laws of nature, and you may call down the lightning from the sky: surround yourself with glass, and the lightning may play innocuously a few inches from you; it can not touch you; you may defy it; you have obeyed the conditions of nature, and nature is on your side against it.

In the same way, there are conditions in the world of Spirit, by compliance with which God's Spirit comes into the soul with all its revelations, as surely as lightning from the sky, and as invariably:-such conditions as these: "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” "No man hath seen God at any time." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us.” “With this man will I dwell, even with him that is of a meek and contrite spirit." "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine "-reverence, love, meekness, contrition, obedience-these conditions having taken place, God enters into the soul, whispers His secret, becomes visible, imparts knowledge and conviction.

Now these laws are universal and invariable: they are subject to no caprice. There is no favorite child of nature who may hold the fire-ball in the hollow of his hand and trifle with it without being burnt; there is no selected child of grace who can live an irregular life without unrest ; or be proud, and at the same time have peace; or indolent, and receive fresh inspiration; or remain unloving and cold, and yet see and hear and feel the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.

Therefore the apostle preached the Cross to men who felt, and to men who felt not, the Revelation contained in it. The Cross is humbleness, love, self-surrender- these the apostle preached. To conquer the world by loving it-to be blest by ceasing the pursuit of happiness, and sacrificing life instead of finding it-to make a hard lot easy by submitting to it this was his divine philosophy of life. And the princes of this world, amidst scoffs and laughter, replied, Is that all? Nothing to dazzle-nothing to captivate. But the disciples of the inward life recognized the Divine Truth which this doctrine of the Cross contained. The humble of

heart and the loving felt that in this lay the mystery of life, of themselves, and of God, all revealed and plain. It was God's own wisdom, felt by those who had the mind of Christ.

The application of all this is very easy: Love God, and He will dwell with you. Obey God, and He will reveal the truths of His deepest teaching to your soul. Not perhaps : -as surely as the laws of the spiritual world are irreversible, are these things prepared for obedient love. An inspiration as true, as real, and as certain as that which ever prophet or apostle reached, is yours, if you will have it so.

And if obedience were entire and love were perfect, then would the revelation of the Spirit to the soul of man be perfect too. There would be trust expelling care, and enabling a man to repose; there would be a love which would cast out fear; there would be a sympathy with the mighty All of God. Selfishness would pass, isolation would be felt no longer; the tide of the universal and eternal Life would come with mighty pulsations throbbing through the soul. To such a man it would not matter where he was, nor what: to live or die would be alike. If he lived, he would live unto the Lord; if he died, he would die to the Lord. The bed of down surrounded by friends, or the martyr's stake girt round with curses-what matter which? Stephen, dragged, hurried, driven to death, felt the glory of God streaming on his face: when the shades of faintness were gathering round his eyes, and the world was fading away into indistinctness, "the things prepared" were given him. His spirit saw what "eye had never seen. The later martyr bathes his fingers in the flames, and while the flesh shrivels and the bones are cindered, says, in unfeigned sincerity, that he is lying on a bed of roses. It would matter little what he was—the ruler of a kingdom, or a tailor grimed with the smoke and dust of a workshop. To a soul filled with God, the difference between these two is inappreciable-as if, from a distant star, you were to look down upon a palace and a hovel, both dwindled into distance, and were to smile at the thought of calling one large and the other small.

No matter to such a man what he saw or what he heard; for every sight would be resplendent with beauty, and every sound would echo harmony; things common would become transfigured, as when the ecstatic state of the inward soul reflected a radiant cloud from the form of Christ. The human would become divine, Life-even the meanest noble. In the hue of every violet there would be a glimpse of Divine affection, and a dream of Heaven. The forest

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