willing to be led by the hand, he ends by becoming unable to walk.

The other method is more subtle and, if possible, more dangerous still. It is the attempt to distinguish between professional and personal character. It says, for instance, "I am not disturbed by the personal character of the actors upon the stage. I have nothing to do with their personal character. It is not the man I go to see, but the actor. If he is master of his art, and can interpret to me the facts and emotions of the drama of human life, I am content. I neither know nor care what he is before he comes upon the stage nor after he leaves it. I see him only in his stage dress, and he is to me not a man at all, but an artist. I have no more to do with his personal character than I have with the personal character of the surgeon whom I call in to perform an operation upon a member of my family. In that case I seek the surgeon who knows his business best. If he can do the thing for which I hire him, I come in contact with him solely at that point and touch his life nowhere else."

Is this answer satisfactory? There is much in it. If it were not so specious it would not be so generally adopted as it is by clear-minded people. You will observe that it is the contention which was made by the friends of Mr. Parnell. Probably there is no case upon record where it has been more ably urged than it was in that instance. But it was urged in vain. The robust moral

sense of a Christian community refused to entertain it. They refused wisely. It is a principle of action which is attended by the direst moral peril. In the first place, it is directly in the teeth of the teaching of Holy Scripture. That book, which experience has proven to be the surest guide to men's steps in moral things, insists upon distinguishing between good men and bad. Its glory is that it refuses to gloss over moral distinctions. It says always that the good are good, and the bad are bad, and that this distinction is in the individual himself. In the second place, it proceeds from a radically false notion of human nature. It assumes that it is possible for two human personalities, like two circles, to touch each other at a single point only. That they may touch one another in society, in business, in politics, in amusement, and remain apart in all the other points of their lives. Right here is the mistake. When two human beings come in touch at all, they touch throughout their whole extent. The process is not a mechanical, but a vital, one. If we permit a polluted soul to touch ours at all, the pollution discolors, as a drop of colored liquid will discolor a vase of crystal water. The two lives flow together. They mingle so quickly, and they combine with such a chemical obstinacy, that it requires a spiritual chemical reagent to precipitate them. As the Scripture puts it, one "cannot touch pitch and not be defiled."

But the final reason why the Christian may not adopt this principle of action is because if he does so, it destroys his power as a "witness." It puts out his light. The Master conceived clearly of the task to be done by Him and by His followers in this world. There is a great heap of There are evils to be

wrongs to be reduced. rectified. There is a whole world of bad things to be made good. The first step in this direction is that Christ's co-laborer must get himself clear from the evil which he proposes to attack. He cannot live permanently in both camps. He cannot come and go without let or hindrance from one camp to another. It is in this consideration that one finds the key to Christian living in the presence of evil. He must always so bear himself that he can rebuke sin. He cannot rebuke it if he hold shares of stock in it. He cannot approach the wrong-doer as a missionary so long as he can be accused with any sort of color in sharing in the wrong of the evil-doer. Probably no simpler test could be discovered to apply to conduct in this regard than for each Christian to ask himself the question: "Can I share in this business, in this pleasure, in this society, and at the same time be sure that I shall be listened to if I point to the evils in any of them?"

XLI.

MEN'S EVIL TURNED TO GOOD.

"They gathered them togetber, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley-loaves, which remained over.”—JOHN vi. 13.

THESE pieces of barley bread and dried fish had just passed through the alembic of a miracle. From it they emerged and were still barley bread and dried fish. The miracle had not transformed their quality. It had increased their quantity; it had changed their use, but it had not destroyed their identity.

This is a parable of the process whereby the “natural” man becomes the "spiritual" man. The process is a divine one. It is miraculous in the highest degree. But it does not destroy the man's identity. The "new man " is formed from the material which existed in the "old man." Here is the great problem of personal religion. How can a man be transformed into a new creature without losing his identity? It is not so much fear of the pain of plucking out one's right eye, or cutting off one's right hand, which makes him hesitate at the frontier of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the fear that he would not be himself, but someone else, after he should enter. How can a man eliminate all his

badness and still retain his identity? The classic pagan thought of a dark flowing river which all men must finally cross. This river was on the

He

one side Lethe and on the other side Eunoe. who walked down its hither bank lost all memory of the past in its water; crossing to the farther side he was reborn and emerged another creature. Unfortunately there is no such river, nor would men willingly enter it if there were. What shall one who strives to fashion his life according to Christ do with his own evil past? It remains a fact, it cannot be obliterated, it cannot be forgotten-what is to be done?

Think for a moment of the strange way in which the whole course of a man's life is bound together by the ligature of memory. Every soul keeps a record of its own past. This record embraces the sins as well as the virtues. Indeed, the sins are more deeply engraven on the tablet of memory than the virtues. One fancies sometimes that he has forgotten, that they have passed into oblivion. He is mistaken, he has not forgotten them. They are liable at any moment to emerge into his consciousness to surprise and shame him. One's soul is a labyrinth. Memory takes him by the hand at times and leads him reluctantly into its dark places, when to his astonishment he finds that he has been there before and has left a mark. Even the

body has a memory. Evil acts have grown into habits, and the habits have changed, as it were,