for us here in Australia if we thought much more than we do of the majesty of law, and were less ready to change and to disregard it.

The third great principle of Roman life was the Family and the Home. They recognised that it was with the Family, and in the Home that the true strength of the State lay, and the poet Horace, himself no pattern of home life, confessed in deathless verse that it was to disregard of marriage and family life that alone Rome owed her ultimate ruin and decay.

Family life is the means ordained by God for the continuance of the race, and for the training of character and the fitting of the young to play their part and take their right share in the management of the world. It is not easy to estimate the loss that we are suffering, and the danger of disaster with which we are threatened from the modern fear of family life, and the selfish determination not to allow children to interfere with the pursuit of comfort and pleasure. It is not merely that our race is threatened with decay and ruin, that there seems, with the declining birth rate, to be no future in the world for races which, like our own, have played such a great part in its past history. It is not merely that we may in the near future be unable to defend even our own homes from the invasion of less cultured but stronger and more vigorous races; for selfishness may always flatter itself with the cowardly hope that these things may not be in its day; but there are great and terrible evils that are present and actual.

The only child in a family is put under a heavy handicap in the absence of the healthy training in unselfishness and self-forgetfulness, which comes from the interplay of family life with brothers and sisters. More often than not he or she grows up delicate from over care, and inclined to be morbid and self-centred. For a childless household one of the greatest safeguards to marital happiness and fidelity is removed, as is unhappily only too clearly evidenced by the present widespread degradation of morals.

The old Roman knew well that the State was built strongly, only if it was built upon these three great

foundations of God, the Law, and the Home; and often as we nominal Christians forget it the same thing holds good to-day, and we can only be great and strong in proportion as we honour and reverence these great and unchanging foundations on which human life and society are built.

XL.-SAVING THE LIFE

Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it.—ST. LUKE IX. 24.

TH

HESE words of our Lord seem at first not a little strange. What is meant by life and why should we not try to preserve it? And how can we save it by being willing to lose it? All this wants thinking about.

St. Paul distinguishes three different kinds or parts of life. There is the life of the body, the life of the natural man (he calls it the psychic life), and the life of the spirit, that part of us which is most like God.

It is the natural or psychic life that our Lord is here referring to and He uses that very word "psyche," soul, or natural life. It covers all our thinking, our desires and affections, all our earthly hopes and fears, and in fact, all our ordinary life except our spirit, which is that part of us which is concerned with right and wrong, with God and prayer and self-discipline, and in a word with all those things which have to do with the eternal and the divine as opposed to the merely human life.

Now a great many people are not in the least concerned about their spiritual life. They think that their natural earthly life is the only thing that really matters. They want to make the best of it, to get out of it all that it has to offer in the way of comfort and pleasure; they grudge every expenditure of time, or interest or money, that interferes in any way with what they hope and intend to get out of life, and yet, as our Lord says, in their very efforts to save,

and gain, and preserve what life has to offer, they lose not only the higher things, but the very value and essence of the earthly life for which they are prepared to sacrifice the spiritual.

Men are continually trying to organise society, and their own lives too, apart from God, missing God out, and thinking that, by so doing, they will be able to get more out of life, but as a matter of fact they as constantly fail. For instance, love is a great and good gift of God, but unless God and God's laws are behind human love what a dangerous thing it is! There is no need to prove it. All modern novels are full of the peril, the sorrow, the suffering of love which thinks only of its own gratification, and nothing of the purpose for which God gave it. Pleasure again is a good gift in life. God means us to be happy, but when we pursue pleasure as a main end and purpose in life we find, to our surprise, that the happiness that we expect eludes us, just as we are sure to miss health if we make the pursuit of health the object of our lives. Knowledge again is a great and good thing, but knowledge by itself does not bring happiness. A man may be very learned but restless and dissatisfied, and ready to echo the words of Ecclesiastes," of making many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh." All literature is testimony to the fact that life, mere life, untouched by something higher, does not satisfy man, and the more he seeks happiness the less he finds it. Pleasure satiates, knowledge wearies, love wounds until man cries: Vanity of vanities; all is vanity under the sun.

Now we must notice that Christ does not say that all earthly things are bad in themselves and to be rejected. He does not condemn home and family, love and happiness, art and beauty, science and knowledge, and all the varied activities of life. He does not regard them as things to be rejected and spurned, but as things to be saved. But He tells us that they cannot be saved by making them the first object of our lives. The way to save them is not to become enslaved to them, but to be willing to lose them, and give them up for the sake of something higher and better, for

the sake of Christ Himself and His Gospel, and in doing this we shall unconsciously save and preserve all that is best worth having in the natural and earthly life. This is a hard saying, but it is profoundly true. It is hard to act upon, but, when we do, we discover how absolutely true it is.

Mr. Chesterton once said: "I am a Christian because it is such fun to be a Christian." There is a profound truth in these words. To the ordinary man or woman who is careless of religion, life is as a rule extraordinarily dull and uninteresting. It is an almost universal complaint. It is because they find life so dull that men fly to drink, and women to flirtation, in both cases often going far beyond what they originally intended. It is because they find life so dull and uninteresting, that people flock to pictureshows and dances and races, and anything that they think will provide a change from their monotony and weariness. Now this very fact is in itself a proof that they have lost their life, lost, that is to say, all the value and purpose and interest out of it.

All life is full

But with the Christian all is different. of interest to him. How can it be dull when he believes that all events have an eternal significance, and that on their issue hangs far more than the issues of life and death. A struggle with temptation can only be dull, if you believe that it does not matter at all whether you win or lose the battle. If you believe that on the issue hangs the whole future, that on it depends the question of heaven or hell in the life to come, it is impossible that you should be dull and uninterested. When you see human souls all round you growing, expanding, blossoming into love and selfsacrifice, or withering, pining, and shrinking into selfishness and death, it is impossible that you should look on unmoved. When you believe that all your life is a great spiritual drama, the issue of which is as yet not certain, but which is steadily tending to a great and dramatic close; when you remember that God and the holy angels are deeply interested spectators of that drama, rejoicing in every victory and grieving for every defeat; when you remember that the consequences of all your actions do not end with yourself;

that they affect others for good or evil, far beyond the immediate circle of your own friends and family; when you remember that you are making or marring, not only the future, but your actual present life here, and all which that involves; then you cannot feel that life is dull, wherever it is or under whatever conditions; and just in proportion to the reality of your belief in and your sympathy with the good, will be the intensity of your interest in it.

This very interest that you take in life will save and transform it for you. If you are interested in life simply for the pleasure or profit that you can get out of it, you will soon become weary and tired of it, but just in proportion as you realise its higher meaning, it will become full of reality and purpose and of breathless interest to you.

A belief in Christ, and His great Gospel message for the world, will not only save your spiritual nature, but it will reclaim all life for you from dullness and inanity. There is no part of life that the Gospel cannot appropriate and use to the glory of God. Art and beauty may, and should be consecrated to the purposes of praise and worship. Knowledge and science are great volumes in which the infinite knowledge and wisdom of God are being more and more revealed to man. Love is only perfect and eternal when it is taken up and directed by the supreme love of Him, Who is the source of all true love. Dark things become clear, and hard places smooth in the light of Him, Who is the Source of all light and all truth, and all weariness disappears in the strength of Him, Who is the Fountain of all life and power. Yes, the words of Christ are words of simple truth when He tells us that, by trying to grasp and hold for ourselves all that life has to offer, we shall only lose it all, while, by being willing to give it all up for the sake of Christ and His Gospel, we shall not only save our own souls by our sacrifice, but gain also that which we did not seek, a new interest and happiness in this life, and a new hope for all that transcends this life.