founded the pure worship of all ages, of all lands, that which all elevated souls will practise until the end of time." Such a saying, however, J. S. Mill would have regarded as "poor stuff," and so could not have been very elevated in spirit. So strange and contradictory are the spheres in which the sceptical mind lives. Having Jesus for our teacher, however, we can very easily afford to put other masters aside.

And this idea of a wide and high childhood will give us a true basis for what is sadly wanted in these days, namely, a nobler brotherhood, with its privileges and duties. To one seeing through that Greek poet's eyes, the circle of the family will not only be large, but the brotherhood real. A poet is peculiarly a brotherly man. He may have his faults, his weaknesses, his sins, but the heart within him pants for a wider and wiser manifestation of real brotherhood. He bases duty not on any narrow gospel of mere patriotism, not on any policy of self-interest, not on the use we can make of those over whom we have influence, but deep down in the brotherly nature. Hence moral distinctions will not take the form of clever calculations. The clear head will see that other members of the family have their rights which warm hearts will not trifle with.

The Father of light, shining in upon every soul, will make the lines of duty as well as of privilege plain. Lifted into such light, a man's duty to his brother will not be a question of how much he is able to get out of his brother's bones or brains that he can turn to his own gratification. He will measure life by a much higher standard than that. Oh how significant would be the flag that waves over every fatherland, if men, the world over, would intelligently look up to the Father, then round on the family, and say, "We are also His offspring."

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CHAPTER V.

OUR FATHER.

ULYSSES knew that no human creature is an orphan; but there is a Father who always and without intermission takes care of all." Such is an echo of the voices which come in upon us, as it were, over the wall that incloses the garden of the Lord. There are many such voices; and though they fall with broken utterances upon the ear, they are not altogether unintelligible on that account. Here, however, the voice is rich and round, and leaving little to be supplied. Men are not orphans, but the children of their Father who is in heaven, and whose arms encircle them all.

I am saying a little prayer in my heart," said a poor man to me one day in the Infirmary, as I stood by his bedside. "Well," I said, "and what do you pray?" "I say the 'Our Father," was his reply. Childhood's memories seemed to come up and warm that poor old heart as he lay in the ward among

his sick companions. Like many more of childhood's simple rhymes, said o'er a thousand times, this one, simple and yet profound, easy and yet difficult, comes upon us in our darkness and sorrow, not only recalling the lights that burned on the home-hearth so long ago, but lifting the heart to Him who never yet turned a weary, sorrowing child away. The memories so sweet and holy that gather round these words throughout Christendom, enshrine them in every heart the cords of which have ever felt their mystic touch.

With that power of compression which was only His, Jesus has gathered up the instincts, the duties, and the privileges of men as He presents them in this form of words. As Dr. Morison puts it, "The Lord's Prayer is thus a manner and model of prayer;" "for in this particular," as Tertullian remarks, "it was needful that new wine should be laid up in new skins." Its brevity and simplicity, its comprehensiveness and depth; that humanity and tenderness that make, as with a touch of nature, the whole world kin, fits it at once for old and young. What a vision of little folded hands, and little bended knees, and little simple acts of devotion performed at a mother's knee, or at the bedside, morning and evening, comes

upon the Christian mind as it tries to read the history of these words since Jesus uttered them. The repetition of them in the great congregation, were it only not just so formal, so hurried, and so cold, would be not only the expression of dependence upon the Father, but of that brotherhood in whose presence strife, and war, and selfishness could not live. As it is, who can tell what undercurrents of kindly feeling have been made to flow by the very fact that rich and poor men, learned and ignorant men, healthy and sickly men, have sat or stood side by side and said, "Our Father."

Like every great word or deed, this simplicity, so attractive and so adapted to all measures of power, has behind it an immense background of meaning which taxes at once the intellect and heart of man. To gather with a wide embrace a large sheaf of the golden stalks that spring from this single seedthought, it is necessary that a man be both humble and strong. For only think what endless lines of thought start from the one word "Father." An idol is nothing, however big it be. Pile world on world, and system on system, till science, weary with its work, falls down and adores, the thing it worships will be