Through evil or through good report Still keeping by thy side;

By life or death, in this poor flesh,

Let Christ be magnified!

How happily the working days
In this dear service fly!
How rapidly the closing hour

The time of rest-draws nigh, When all the faithful gather home, A joyful company!

And everywhere the Master is

Shall his blest servants be.

From the German. SPITTA.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHRISTIAN BENEVOLENCE- THE WORK OF THE CHURCH-NATURAL PHILANTHROPY - THE DEATH OF CHRIST AN ELEMENT OF POWER-DUTY TO THE OPPRESSED POETRY.

"Who went about doing good."—Acts 10: 38.

AST is the work of Christian benevolence which lies before the church, the tem

poral and spiritual amelioration of mankind. Well does it deserve the deepest thought, the most fervent

prayers, and the most abundant toil

of every child of God and every lover of his race. With every year there comes a louder call from the whitening harvests.

Abroad, the few laborers faint beneath their burdens even while rejoicing in their sacrifices and successes, and send back the cry, "Come over and help us." At home, the poor and suffering and degraded and benighted still abound. The

swelling tide of emigration is bearing to our shores, with many who are enlightened and Christian, multitudes of the superstitious, ignorant, and vicious. The impenitent and Christless are on every side. And at this eventful hour, the millions who are coming forth of their house of bondage present a spectacle of thrilling interest. Was there ever laid upon the Christian conscience and heart so precious and fearful a burden?

Surely there is needed a spirit of broad and hearty benevolence to uplift the weak and oppressed, to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the degraded, to care for the suffering, to seek and save the perishing.

How shall it be attained? Whence shall it come?

“Our cold and decaying humanity must be fed by a fuller life than its own, must be nourished in a warmer bosom, before it can attain to any enduring heat of nobleness or love."1

Whose is that "warmer bosom," that "fuller life"? There can be but one answer. It is that most unselfish, loving, tender, and sinless heart of the Son of God who was also the Son of man. He was anointed to "preach the gospel to the

1 Dora Greenwell. Patience of Hope.

poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." He "went about doing good." His was the heart that yearned with an infinite tenderness over human guilt and grief, that carried our sorrows, and was broken for our offences. The church needs to be warmed into new life by a closer fellowship with that sacred, bleeding Heart, that throbbing Bosom.

In Christ crucified, humanity, wounded and scarred and blasted, has its true Friend, faithful to rebuke, able to heal. At the cross only can be learned the priceless value of the soul,' the ruinous

"One recalls the sublime rapture of Pascal, the living memory of which he always cherished by carrying about with him a written paper, opening with these words, the broken but glorious expression of a faith unspeakable:

'God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!
Not the god of the philosophers and wise men;
Certainty, certainty, love, joy, peace;

God of Jesus Christ.'

Then comes this significant expression:

'Greatness of the human soul.'

Thus, at the very moment when this great genius throws himself at the feet of Christ, exclaiming, 'Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! I have cast myself off from him; I have forsaken him, denied, crucified him;

and defiling nature of sin, the beauty of holiness, the majesty of justice, and the true quality of love. To the philanthropy learned of Christ, especially at his cross, there is a breadth and tenderness which the philanthropy springing from the mere natural sensibilities must ever lack. It is more delicate in its instincts, more catholic in its aims. It is the philanthropy of heaven. It is Christ going about "doing good," in the persons of his faithful followers. Such philanthropy forms the truest judgment of what is essential and what only accidental, so that it lays the broadest and surest foundation of reform and culture. Making foremost and vital the spiritual and eternal, it provides also and more effectually for the temporal and earthly. Thus has it lifted up the Sandwich Islanders and the Karens.

The natural impulses of benevolence are often beautiful and effective to a certain point, but they are apt to act blindly and rashly, to run into vague

oh, that I may never be severed from him!'-at this moment of 'complete and sweet self-renunciation,' in the dust where he falls, he has the lively consciousness of the greatness of the human soul. And he is not mistaken, for never does it appear greater than in the presence of the Redeemer sacrificed for it. It is at the foot of the cross that one can exclaim, 'The greatness of the human soul!'"- From the French of Edmond de Pressensé. Critical Review of Renan's Life of Christ.