practical man, this is Your way of speak

But, it is objected by the all that is really possible. ing of religion as a feast is not true to the facts. You may call it a necessity, if you will; you may insist upon it as a duty, as much as you will; but we would prefer that you should be honest and not speak of it as a festivity. We will go to church as we will go to the routine of a training school, but do not ask us to go in the same mood in which a hungry man goes to a banquet. There is much of truth in this objection. Indeed, it is altogether true. Religion is disagreeable to many. Our Lord was described long ago as "a dry root out of a barren soil, without form or comeliness that men should desire him." It is difficult for us to sympathize heartily with the rhapsodies of the Psalmist. He declares that he had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the spacious tents of the wicked. We are not so sure about that. If the tents are sufficiently spacious and well furnished, and the table and the music well equipped, we possibly would find more pleasure in that surrounding than we would by playing sexton at the door of a church.

This is true. But while in our sober moments we lament it, we are satisfied in the bottom of our hearts that it ought not to be true. There is something in the soul of every sane man which responds to the invitation of the Great King. It compels him at least to reply to that

invitation courteously, and deters him from saying boldly that he has no taste for the feast which is spread. Now, why cannot duty and inclination be brought to harmonize? If the things of God be those things which the secret soul delights in, why cannot the everyday soul be brought to possess the same palate which is possessed by the inmost nature? We reply they can be brought into harmony, but not without serious effort. It is not at all that an intentionally wicked man is hostile to his Father in heaven; it is that the tenants of the kingdom can become so engrossed with the activities of their holding, that they fall out of intimate relationship with the King himself.

The thing to be deplored is the loss of spiritual sensibility, the elimination of religious taste. For illustration: A young man with a longing for travel and a taste for art sets about the task of accumulating a fortune, with the intention of ultimately gratifying those longings. His business, when he begins, is a torture, but he holds to it for the sake of the use to which he means to apply his fortune when he shall have secured it. Years afterward he has become rich. He is able to retire. But he discovers to his consternation that his early tastes are all gone. His sordid habits have created within him a sordid soul. The farm, the oxen, the domestic exigencies have these dangerous possibilities, that they destroy, or at least render less sensitive, the

religious faculties. Religion has a language of its own. It has its own customs, its own demands, its own range of activities. Long-continued neglect of them results, first, in indifference, then in incapacity, and, if pursued far enough, ends in hostility.

It is a repeated teaching of the Master that in order to go into the secrets of God there is necessary a loosening of hold upon the things of life. It is not necessary that one should turn upon them or revile them or pronounce them bad, but he must "use them as not abusing them." To come into practical religion an act of will is necessary. People do not realize ordinarily how strenuous this act of will must be. Our Lord uses the most emphatic terms. "Strive," He says. The word is even more emphatic than that, it is "Agonize to enter in at the strait gate." The gate is strait. It is so difficult of entrance, and the opposite path is so easy of entrance, that if one really cares to effect an entrance into the kingdom of heaven he must take its gates by storm.

Finally, notice in this parable the way in which it illuminates the character and habit of the Host Himself. His hospitality is exhaustless. From His infinite yearning flows out the invitation not only to the guests originally bidden, but to those who toil along the highways and crouch behind the hedges. But His dignity is equal to His hospitality. He presses no man beyond the

man's own will. He accepts the "regrets" in the same spirit in which they are offered. If any man does not care to come, he need not. He is allowed to go his own way, and his place is filled. We wish we could shake loose the secret of God's final intent as to that great mass of humanity who find nothing attractive in the feast that He spreads. Shall they pass through the whole range of their existence estranged from God? Or will it be that, either in this stage or in some other, they shall be driven by their constantly increasing soul hunger to satisfy themselves at the feast of God? The answer to this question is not yet available, but one thing is clear from this and from all the teaching of the New Testament, that the desire of the Father in heaven is expressed in "My son, give me thine heart."

XXX.

IMITATION OF CHRIST.

"Scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet perad= venture for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth bis love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."-ROMANS v. 7, 8.

THE real difficulty in the way of God's holding friendly feelings to men would seem to be not so much their wickedness as their distastefulness. It is easier, as a rule, to love a wicked thing than a disgusting thing. When one sees humanity in a mass, the thing which is apt to impress him is its excessive unloveliness. God's affection for man has stood this, the most difficult of all tests. Following God's way as far as may be, how ought the Christian to regard the evil that is in the world? How should a Christ-like man think and act toward wicked men and women? Of course, I assume that he does not set himself on any vantage ground of self-righteousness, from which he might regard himself as separate from the rest, but bearing in mind that he wishes to be like God, and at the same time that he lives among men, how shall he bear himself toward the evil? Here is the answer: He should follow in the path of Christ, as Christ followed in the path of