perfect. Jesus Christ was accused of more crimes and worse ones than ever man committed in the world. He not only "had a devil," in the language of His slanderers, but He was Himself in league with the Prince of Devils and did wonders by his aid! Every act He did was carped at and misinterpreted. When He talked to the people about their duty to their God, He was abused for trying to incite rebellion against Cæsar. When He told the great truth for men's comfort, that God and man had met in His person, He was accused of blasphemy. When He went to His friends' houses to eat at their tables He was called a glutton. When He drank wine like other folk, He was called a drunkard. When they would not endure His presence among them any longer, they took Him up onto a hill outside the city and nailed Him on a

cross.

It is a sad commentary upon nature that we like bad people more than good ones. They are so much more entertaining! What is the reason we never allow any man perfect credit for purity of motive? Did you ever hear a person's character much praised in company, without feeling a sort of hankering to say something on the other side of the question? It is as hard for some to keep from besmirching a fair character, as for a schoolboy to resist throwing stones through the windows of an empty house. Good people so often stir up the evil that is in us, and

then we attribute to them the character which we ourselves possess.

There is a kind of person we see often--the passionate, ill-natured man-the man who is always living in a tempest. He is always wronged. Someone is eternally imposing upon him. To believe his story one would think him the most abused mortal upon the face of the earth. It never strikes him that the enemy he possesses is in his own bosom—a restless, uneasy, discontented mind. He does not know that to be ill-natured is just the same thing as to be illtreated.

Then the actual wrongs of this world are so often blamed upon somebody else by the ones who do them. Did you ever hear of a filthy debauchee who had not at his tongue's end some silly story about his having been deceived once, and so determining to take revenge upon all for the wrong done him by one? Did you ever know an habitual drunkard who did not have somebody else to lay the blame of his sin upon? The poor victim of drink-was he not disinherited by his father? Wasn't he driven to desperation by the slanders of his enemies? Was he not overtaken by misfortune and his credit ruined? Wasn't he married to a wife who was a perpetual thorn in his side? Isn't it always that somebody else is to blame for it, and never that he goes and gets drunk because he likes it? Everybody has a devil except the one who has it himself.

So human nature in its bad estate everywhere. We never know that we have a devil ourselves, but always imagine that other people are possessed.

Now, the lesson of all this is, that as so much of misery comes from an evil mind within, so the cure of it can only be looked for from a change in our temper and spirit. To be saved from sin we must be "renewed in the inner man by the power of the Spirit of God." It is not any change of condition, or place, or circumstances we want, but a change of disposition. Notice what Christ offers to the world, not any improvement in outward circumstances, but rest, peace, cooling the fevered soul in its sickness, purging the jaundiced eyes of the distorting pigment, making life sweet and pleasant because it is clean.

XI.

FAMILY RELIGION.

"The went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: and increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."-LUKE ii. 51, 52.

It is a little startling to have it plainly intimated that Jesus came to be what He was, partly through the way in which He was reared. Clearly in the text His growth in wisdom and goodness is connected with the discipline of Joseph and Mary.

The supreme moment in the life of man or woman is when they hold in their arms their first-born child. Its soft fingers unlock chambers in their souls whose very existence they had been ignorant of. It educates them much and rapidly before they begin to educate it. But they must begin. And the religious life of the child will be very much what the religion of the father's family will make it. As things are among us, the chances are good that the ordinary child will have his growth in wisdom and in stature looked after. His schools will be selected with the best skill available, and he will be kept at his books. If anything threatens his physical welfare a physician will be called in. Food,

teaching, exercise, medicine-all these things the average child finds at his disposal. Indeed, there is a growing disposition not only to provide them for him, but to see that he is compelled to take them.

But what about that ingredient in his life which will lead him "into favor with God and man"? To whom shall he look for that? To chance? To a random impression which may be made upon him late in life? No! The place from where he has a right to expect religious guidance is from his father's house. If his father be either unable, unwilling, or unfit to furnish this, he has no business to have either house or child.

The one thing which is needed in this country above all else, is the religion of the family-not the religion of the individual or of the Church, but of the household. It is in grave peril of being lost from that place where it pre-eminently belongs. One large portion of the religious element of the community assumes without much thought that religion is a personal matter solely; that it approaches the adult individual, man or Another portion assigns it its home almost exclusively in the Church; it segregates an area of beliefs, practices, and ceremonials, and calls these religion. So they are. But still the institute of religion is the family. If Christianity brings nothing to any man save to loosen in him his sense of being the priest of his own household, it may well be asked whether he had

woman.