receiveth sinners, and eateth with them," tho they did not understand it, they had discovered the key-note of His life and gospel. The most degraded and neglected man was, and is now, dear to Jesus.

A fellow minister tells us how he was walking down the street one day when he saw a woman, good and pure, refined and cultured, walking with a man whose face was red with drink, whose form and look and manners bore the marks of deepest dissipation. He stept to her side and said, "Madam, why are you with this man?" She little heeded him at first as she supported her disreputable companion's unsteady steps. "Madam," the minister said, "why do you not hand him over to the police?" She drew herself up and with a righteously indignant anger mingled with pathos, said: "Sir! I am his mother. I am his mother." So Jesus Christ says of each lost man, "I am his brother!" And of every poor sinning woman, "I am her brother!" We must learn this lesson from Jesus. The light of heaven which has shined in our hearts is not for ourselves alone, but for our brothers and sisters

about us.

Shakespeare, in "Measure for

Measure," says:

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us,

'twere all alike

As if we had them not.
But to fine issues.

Spirits are not finely touched

The Apostle Paul was of the same mind when he said, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and the barbarians." He felt that,

having received the grace of God in the forgiveness of his sins, he owed the Gospel to every other man in the world who did not have it. I would that God would put the same feeling heavily upon every one of our hearts. The sinners in this wicked city would soon be won to Christ if all Christians felt as they ought their obligation to share with others their faith in Jesus. The more we have received, the richer our own experience of the love of God, the more intense should be our sense of obligation to carry its helpfulness to those who need it most. Jesus said that even "the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister," and Whittier, his heart

warmed with the same thought, beautifully

says:

Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may Thy service be?

Not name, nor form, nor ritual word,

But only following Thee.

We bring no ghastly holocaust,

We pile no graven stone,

He serves the best who loves the most,

His brothers and Thy own.

GOODNESS AND LIGHT

"God saw the light, that it was good."-Gen. 1:4.

T

HIS is a declaration that in the sight

of God light is good in itself. There was as yet nothing beautiful for it to shine upon. The mountains had not yet lifted themselves from above the waste of waters. There were no forests, no valleys, no widereaching plains, no birds, no beauty of any kind except the beauty which is inherent in light itself. But God declares that the light is good, whatever it may shine upon. Light is God's chariot, which conveys heat and purifies and cleanses all upon which it shines. All that was to be good and beautiful in the world was to be helped into being by the light. And so it is that all goodness in the hearts and lives of men has this intimate and dependent relation upon light.

I

Goodness loves the light, having nothing to fear; while evil seeks the darkness, wishing to hide. Christ brings this out very clearly in His talk with Nicodemus, when He says: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." The man that is doing right is full of courage. He has nothing to fear. God is his Heavenly Father, and with a feeling of childlike boldness, conscious of that fatherly love, he finds his refuge in God who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all. The man who has no secrets from God, who is conscious of his sincerity and genuineness, feels sure of his reception in God's presence. The poet has given us a beautful description of