in Christ begins. Meanwhile the faithful Christian rests on the words of St. Paul. He is "persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

XII. LITTLE THINGS

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.-ST. LUKE XVI. 10.

NOTHING is more common than the habitual misjudg

ment as to what is really small and what is really great in life. This is strikingly shown in Browning's poem, The Epistle, in which the Arab physician tells of the changed outlook of Lazarus after his resurrection.

"Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,

And of the passing of a mule with gourds,
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling fact he will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness

(Far as I see) as if in that indeed

He caught prodigious import whole results.

Should his child sicken unto death, why look

For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,

Or pretermission of his daily craft!

While a word, gesture, glance from that same child
At play, or in the school, or laid asleep,

Will startle him to an agony of fear."

So the saintly poet George Herbert says:

"Who sweeps a room as for Thy Laws,

Makes it and the action fine."

God Himself has shown us an example in His care for little things. Take for example a honeycomb. A most

difficult and exact mathematical problem is contained in the structure of the honeycomb. The problem which was discussed by the mathematicians of England some hundred and fifty years ago was "Find the shape of a vessel of such a kind that it will hold the maximum amount of liquid, be of the maximum strength, and use the minimum of material, and fit in with the other vessels of the same shape with a minimum loss of space." The mathematicians worked it out and found that the conditions were fulfilled by a hexagonal vessel with ends pointed at angles of 109.26 and 76:34. The cell of the bee was then examined and found to fulfil these conditions almost exactly, the angles being 109-28 and 76.32. About twenty years later, the mathematicians went over their figures again, and found that the bee was right and the slight error lay with them.

Again we may notice our Lord's care for little things. After the great feast in which by a word He had multiplied the few loaves and fishes into food, for many thousands of those who came to hear Him, He said to His disciples: "Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost." Again when He had brought back to life the daughter of Jairus, and the wondering friends were crowding round and questioning her, our Lord thought of the weakness and exhaustion that must have been the consequence of such an experience, and ordered that something should be given her to eat.

So it is with us, it is not the great and showy things of our life that really matter most-these are usually results, not causes-it is the small things that often matter most, the little resolution kept or broken, the small act of kindness, or of self-indulgence done or refrained from, the protesting or the jesting word, even the mere look of annoyance or of sympathy.

There is an old story to the effect that a great king once determined to build a magnificent church to the glory of God; it was to be all his own gift, and no one else was to have any share in it. The great building was at last completed and a vast assembly met for its dedication. As the procession entered by the great door, over which the

name of the donor was inscribed, the king looked up and found that the name of a woman was there in its place. The proceedings were stopped, and the king made inquiries as to the name which was known to none. At last after much search, a poor widow was brought before him. 66 What have you done?" said the king. The poor woman replied that she had wanted to help in the building of the church, but was so poor that she had nothing to give, so she used to go out and gather handfuls of grass and give them to the horses that drew the stones for the building. Let her name stay," said the king; "she has done more than I have done."

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When we look out on nature, we are amazed at the strength and power that lie in little things. A beautiful Italian story tells of a political prisoner who, during his hour of exercise, noticed one day that the heavy paving stones of the courtyard were slightly displaced in one spot, and with wild hopes of escape he saw them day by day, rise higher and higher, until at last a wallflower thrust itself up into air and light. A flower that ultimately brought him release and happiness.

What is weaker than water? A little child can splash it hither and thither with baby fingers, yet this same water with the power of a law of God behind it, will take up an iron ship weighing thousands of tons, and toss it about like a toy.

What is lighter than the air which descends without harm into the most delicate blood-vessels of the lungs that a finger touch would destroy? Yet with the force of a law of God behind it, this same air unchanged sweeps over the earth as a hurricane levelling before it the strongest oak of the forest, and the towering handiwork of man.

So it is with us. In ourselves we may be never so weak, never so powerless, but God can make as mighty a use of us as He does of the flower, of the water, or of the wind.

Let us never complain that we cannot do anything. It is a half-truth. We can of ourselves do little or nothing, but we can do all things with the power of God behind us, and the force of His Almighty Will working with and for us.

What seem to us to be small efforts with apparently no result, are not so in reality. On August 12, 1812, a stone was dropped into the water at the entrance of Plymouth Sound. Day after day thereafter smail vessels arrived and dropped tons of stones over an area a mile in length and over one hundred yards in width. Day after day the work went on for twenty-nine years, and the sea looked just the same, the millions of tons of stone had disappeared, and the vast sums of money seemed to have been spent in vain. Then one day a stone did not sink but remained on the surface, and in a few months the vast work was completed, and shelter given to a navy.

One of the truest and deepest sayings of St. Paul is : "When I am weak, then am I strong.' When we think that we are strong; when we trust in our own strength and wisdom and goodness, and think that we can carry on very well by ourselves; when we scheme and plan with the best intentions, and scorn the feeble and the weak; when we are confident that we shall succeed because we know that our cause is good; even when we feel the joy of conflict and the enthusiasm of victory, how often, and how miserably, do we fail. We are not so strong as we think, and the forces against us are far stronger than we suspect.

The only time that we are really strong is when, as St. Paul says, we know our own weakness, when we realise that by and of ourselves we are not able to overcome the world, and the flesh, and the devil, when we know that so far from being strong, we are really weak, weak of purpose, easily distracted, impatient of delay, uneasy under suffering, thinking more of ourselves than of our neighbour or of our God. Then when we know our weakness and our need, and turn to God with all our heart to pray for His power and His strength, pray that it may not be we who achieve, but He that works in and through us, then indeed and only then are we strong.

Let us ever remember then that it is often the seemingly little things that are great and the seemingly great that are small. Remember how fog distorts, how it magnifies

objects that are close and hides altogether the greater things that are afar off. A shrub appears big as a tree, and the tree we cannot see at all. So it is that the fog of earth distorts our vision, and makes us mistake little things for great, while we do not see the really great at all. Let us pray God for Christ's sake to clear and purify our eyes and to disperse the mists that blind us, so that with purer vision we may press forward to the mark of our high calling in Jesus Christ.

XIII. TALEBEARING

Where no wood is, the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth.-PROVERBS XXVI. 20.

WE

know well how a forest fire rages when once started, how it spreads from tree to tree, and the terrible damage that it may do. Valuable timber, homesteads and stock, often men and women are engulfed in the flaming furnace as it rages unchecked so long as there are trees to devour. But fierce and furious as is the fire it needs a spark to start it. So well is this understood that there are parts of America where the penalty of death was inflicted on any one who started a fire even unintentionally. Yet however great may be the conflagration, when there is no more fuel the fire goes out.

So it is with human society. A tale, a scandal, a quarrel is started, and it rages from house to house in a town like a veritable conflagration ever growing in intensity, ever varying in form, ever deepening in virulence as it spreads further and further from the truth. The law of gossip and scandal is the same as that of the forest fire: "where there is no wood, the fire goeth out, where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth."