Oh,

smoking flax he will not quench." brother, sister, has life gone hard with you? Is your heart heavy and sore with trouble? Does it seem to you in your discouragement that you are like a broken reed? Christ will take you in His arms as tenderly as ever mother brooded over her helpless babe. Again it is said of Jesus, "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end." No man shall ever sorrow because Jesus was unfaithful or deserted the heart that trusted Him in the hour of need. Everything else may change, but Christ is the same "yesterday, to-day, and forever." Paul, who had more trials than most men, who had been shipwrecked, and beaten with rods, stoned until he was left for dead, and imprisoned through weary years, after it all was able to say with joyous confidence: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

THE BIRTH OF INDIVIDUALITY

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear: And it was so."-Gen. 1:9.

O

UR text brings us to the birth of individuality in the story of creation. Up to this point in this condensed biography of the universe we have been dealing with the world in a mass-a great seething, heaving mass. It is all alike. It is vast and aweinspiring, but it is monotonous. Now God's purpose begins to express itself in individual shapes and forms. Diversity is introduced. Things begin to differ from each other, and have characteristics of their own. The waters begin to recede, and the gaunt, huge mountains peer forth into the atmosphere and thrust their summits upward into the newly formed sky. Individualism now takes its place. Each mountain and cañon and valley and tableland has topography and story of its very own. The world now begins to take on added interest.

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We should learn from this the importance of individuality in our human lives. It is a sin to try to make people all on the same cut-and-dried plan. Much of the interest of humanity lies in the diversity of gift and power. There is much in our modern civilization which tends to force men and women into the same mold, and make everybody simply an ape of somebody else.

There is a picture which has attracted a great deal of attention recently on the continent of Europe, which has given a very painful impression to many people who have studied it. The picture represents a youth in the very flower of his age grasped by a monster whose arms seem like walls of iron all around him. The youth is helpless in the grasp of the giant, and is bowing his head in a sort of resigned despair. It is useless to struggle! Men have felt the truth of that picture. There is a truth in it. There is much in our modern civilization that presses on life. There are influences laid upon us all, the effect of which is to obstruct the free development of our indi

viduality and to squeeze out of us that divine gift of personality which makes one person different from another. We should seek in dealing with children and youth coming under our guidance, and in the development of our own natures, to give freedom to the original bent and talent with which God has endowed the human soul.

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We should see the interest which belongs to youth that has as yet untried possibilities in it. The new lands are interesting not because of what they are, but because of their promise. Dawson, the scientist, referring to the statement in connection with this text that "God saw that it was good," comments that to our view that primeval dry land would scarcely have seemed good. It was a world of bare, rocky peaks and verdureless valleys-here active volcanoes, with their heaps of scoria and scarcely cooled lava currents, there vast mud flats, recently upheaved from the bottom of the waters, nowhere even a blade of grass, or a

clinging lichen.

Yet it was good in the view of its Maker, who could see it in relation to the uses for which He had made it, and as a fit preparatory step to the new · wonders He was soon to introduce. The opportunity to live and work out God's purpose in us in the world is a priceless privilege. Every youth should realize that he is a separate individual study and creation of Almighty God, intended to fulfil a mission among men, to do work which in some high and noble sense, which we can not fully understand, no one else will ever be able to do-work which if he fails to do must remain undone forever. The violet is a very delicate little blossom, but how distinctly poorer the world would be in flowers if it refused to bloom. The song thrush is a little bird, but if it ceased to sing the woods would be perceptibly impoverished of song. So God has given to each one of us some power to wake music that is needed in the great orchestra of human life, and every one of us who fails to do our work at the very best in some way mars the divine harmony. To every human heart there is given the spiritual soil out of which