these latter ye cannot yet bear. The difficulty is not with their truth, nor with my ability to state them in terms, but it is in the limitation of your faculties." This principle is a most farreaching one. When you open the Old Testament, for example, retaining in your minds the thought that it is a revelation from Almighty God, you are apt to be surprised and shocked when you find it apparently giving its sanction to ideas and customs which are far below our moral standards. We find it speaking, apparently, with approval of wholesale, indiscriminate judgments inflicted upon innocent women and children for the faults of their fathers or their kin. We find it, to our surprise, speaking with approval of slavery, of polygamy, of, in fact, a whole range of thoughts and actions which we unhesitatingly condemn. How shall we reconcile the fact that all these are contained in a "revelation" of God?

"God

Jesus gives the explanation. He says: allowed these on account of the hardness of your father's hearts." He might have said, with equal truth, on account of their spiritual stupidity. He taught them as much and as fast as they were able to bear. He could not in the nature of the case go faster than they were able to move. When God made His final and exhaustive revelation of Himself in the person of His Son, He was still compelled to wait for the fullness of the time. Even then only a handful were able to

comprehend the light, and that, incompletely, partially, and like children. This is the guiding principle of the revelation of God in all its stages.

What I am chiefly concerned with just now, is to point out that this principle obtains in the individual religious life. The knowledge of God depends upon the capacity to receive that knowledge. There is a widespread error, which would be whimsical if it were not so fatal, that one may turn to religion at any moment when the mood. seizes him, and be able at that moment to take it all in and comprehend its contents. One is reminded of the man who, when asked if he could play the violin, replied that "he never had, but he supposed he could." It is as foolish as to expect to be taught the calculus before one has experimentally learned arithmetic. There is a reasonableness and a method in religion which is inexorable. It has laws of its own, and those laws are rooted in the nature of things. This is one of them: there are such things as first principles, and one cannot go on to higher things until he has learned the rudiments.

It is

The truth of revelation is never final. outpoured from the infinite reservoir of the Almighty, and that reservoir is inexhaustible. Pastor John Robinson, at Leyden, was more right than even he supposed when he ventured to point to the Bible and say: "I am persuaded that God had yet more truth to come to us,

which will break forth in time out of His Holy Word." This truth is always breaking forth out of His Holy Word. "Old things pass away

Those who have

and all things become new." fondly fancied that they had learned it all, are disturbed and affrighted when they are visited by some newer and additional word from on high.

Human life is thought of by our Lord as a school. The docile and obedient scholar has a thirst for knowledge, but he secures his knowledge step by step. He does not expect that he shall know everything to-day. He waits and hopes that to-morrow will have its lesson also. The impatient and stupid child, when the lesson is offered to him, says: "I don't see any use in this." Like a foolish child, instead of studying the lesson as set, he wants to lay it down and take in hand the big boys' books. The task is slow; it is not always agreeable, nor can one know the import of what he is being taught at the moment. "What I do ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter."

The sum of it all is that the knowledge of God is the supreme wisdom, but because it is a divine wisdom, it shares in the qualities of God. Men come into it little by little. As they increase in goodness they come more and more to understand the infinite goodness. As they grow in patience they come to see the divinity of Christ. As little by little they come to understand Him

the better, they begin to grow more and more like Him. The end of it is that they shall attain to the measure of the stature of men in Christ, because finally they shall be able to see Him as He is.

XXV.

THE MIND OF CHRIST.

"Let tbis mind be in you, which was also in Cbrist Jesus."-PHILIPPIANS ii. 5.

CHRISTIANITY, strictly speaking, is not a "religion" at all. It refuses to take its stand side by side with the other religions of the world. The study of comparative religion concerns it but very little, and can make very little of it. It stands on a ground of its own, and is to a great extent destitute of those very qualities which constitute what is ordinarily called religion. It has little to say about the origin of man. It has no theory to propound concerning the nature of God. It has no formal statement concerning the manner of future existence. It refers to all these things, to be sure, but it takes them for granted. It does not reveal them, it does not uphold them ; it simply assumes them.

Christianity is Christ's working theory of life. It runs thus: "Life," He seems to say, "is under the management of a father. It is to be passed among brothers; act accordingly. Your brother may injure you grievously, wantonly. If you return evil in kind, you intensify and perpetuate the wrong. Do not retaliate. Conquer