For we must never forget that it is not only the clouds that hide the stars from us. Why cannot we go out at midday and see the stars? Not because they are not there, for they are shining quite as brightly as at midnight, but because the light of the sun is so bright and dazzling, that it fills our eyes and we cannot see the stars. So it is not only trouble and sorrow, and sickness and death that alone, or indeed most often, hide God from our eyes. It is when all goes well with us, when we have no troubles, or sorrows, and our eyes are filled with the sunshine of the world and its pleasures, that we are in most danger of losing sight of the True Guiding Star of our lives; and just as, if you want to see the stars in daylight, you must go down a deep well and look up through the light to the stars above, so the Church has provided us with seasons of retreat like Lent, when we may go aside for a time from the things of the world and look up and away from the pleasant things of life to the Bright Star, which alone can be our safe and final Guide.

sun.

You will notice that there is yet one more word: “I am the Bright and the Morning Star." You all know the morning star, that great and beautiful herald of the rising Some of you have, perhaps, had to travel all through the night when the road seems so hard and weary, and the track so difficult to find, and all is cold and cheerless, and the hours seem to pass with leaden feet until at last you see rising in the east that great and beautiful morning star, and you are glad because you know that the night is nearly over, the night of darkness and difficulty and danger. So when Christ the True Morning Star has begun to rise and shine in our hearts; that is to say when He is to us no longer a mere name, a mere form to which we pay accustomed deference, but when He has become to us the greatest and most wonderful thing in the world, the Living Friend, the All Loving and All Loved God, Whose service is the mainspring of our lives, then it is a sign that the night, the night of darkness and doubt, of sin and selfishness, of danger and death is passing away for ever.

But when we see the morning star we are glad, not only

because the night is going, but because the day is coming, because we know that in a little while the great sun will burst up from underground and flood the whole world with his light, so when Christ the True Morning Star has shone upon our lives, we rejoice not only that night is going, but that the dayspring from on high is coming, as the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings, the light of that land where never cometh sighing or sorrow, where God shall wipe away all tears from off all eyes, where we shall see Him as He is and be with Him for evermore.

XVII.-WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD

Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, "What have we spoken so much against Thee?" Ye have said, "It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance.”—MALACHI III. 13, 14.

WE can easily picture to ourselves the scene in the

busy Eastern market-place. Here are the busy retailers, crying their wares; there a group of country farmers bringing loads of fruit and vegetables; there an Arab from the desert having his fling in town; here the merchants loading up strings of asses and pack mules to supply the country dealers; there a group of elders on their way to the council chamber full of municipal affairs; here a swarthy miner from the Sinaitic peninsula, drawing forth a specimen from a fold of his waist-band and expatiating on the richness of the mines-and the need of a little capital to develop them. Then, through all the noise and confusion, comes the Word of God by the mouth of His prophet: "Your words have been stout against Me, saith the Lord," and the crowd answers lightly, justifying itself: "What have we said so much against Thee?" and then comes the answer,

to those who have not already turned and become reabsorbed in their business: "Ye have said, 'It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance ? If the same call were made in any modern nominally Christian market-place to-day, it is to be feared that the reply would not be so very greatly different.

The trouble is not that men are atheists or even agnostics, but they are indifferent. They are too busy, they say, to think much about God. They have their work, their friends, their amusements and their troubles, and the thought of God does not greatly interest them. This is a very difficult attitude to meet, more difficult than open opposition, but it is a very foolish one all the same. Truth is truth whether men accept it or ignore it. Suppose that there had been born five hundred years ago a man endowed with the modern knowledge of sanitary science. Imagine him coming to the mayor, or burgomaster, of a mediæval town and saying to him: "You, sir, and all my fellow citizens are deploring the outbreak of plague which is sweeping away our people by the hundred, but there is no reason either to be surprised or to despair. Kill the rats; close the wells under the graveyard; cleanse and purify the lanes; whitewash the houses inside; bring in fresh water from the hills six miles away, and this disease will disappear and not return." Can we not imagine the worthy mayor replying, "What have rats, water, or whitewash to do with disease? We all know that the plague is a visitation of God. We have far too much to do obtaining a charter for our city, completing the walls and building our new cathedral to bother with such nonsense.' And if the rash reformer had persisted that unless his advice was taken, there might soon be no city to defend, and no people to fill the church, he would soon have found himself lamenting his premature wisdom in the lowest dungeons of the municipality. Now all is changed. The man of science has only to point out the cause of the disease and we hasten to follow his advice and honour him with an institute or a statue. Yet truth was truth just as much then as now. God's laws of health work out their relentless course

without regard to whether a man believes them or not, and so do God's spiritual laws. Whether we believe or not they work out their course all the same.

Men often fail to reflect how much else is left open with the question of God. Is there to be no future for love? Poet, painter, and novelist, have exhausted all their art in picturing the power of love, how it holds and possesses us till we come to love another better than our own life or happiness. You remember the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the distracted mother of the little Prince Arthur.

"I am not mad

My name is Constance. I was Geoffrey's wife,
Young Arthur was my son and he is dead.

I am not mad. I would to God I were."

And is all this intensity of affection to be destroyed by death? When we stand by the graveside and hear the earth fall upon the coffin, do we believe that the loved one has been utterly stamped out of existence, destroyed and annihilated by death; that never, never more shall we meet through the ages of eternity? It depends on the being of God.

Pain of body is hard to bear, and pain of mind is harder, but worse than all to the soul that is not dead is the knowledge that we have done an irreparable wrong. We have spoken some evil word and planted a seed of wrong which has grown and thriven beyond our killing; we have done an evil deed and not only a human life, but a human soul lies crushed and dead. Is there never to be any possibility of atonement and of pardon for the evil we have done? Again it depends on the being of God.

What of all earth's highest hopes, ideals, and aspirations, which have stirred the hearts of poet and prophet and preacher, until their words moved and swayed the hearts of the people as the wind bows the ears of the corn. Are all these things a mere illusion? Is he who has had the noblest ideals, the most generous hopes, the loftiest aspirations simply the greatest fool? Again it depends on the being of God.

Or take the terrible problem of evil in ourselves and in

the world around us. We see innocence wronged; the weak crushed and tortured, the evil man strong, and triumphant; justice mocked, and righteousness oppressed. The cry of tormented women and children comes to us and we ask: Is it true that evil is ever really and finally triumphant over good? Is there not ever a readjustment, a retribution, a compensation, a final victory of good over evil? and again the answer is that it depends on the being of God.

The point of it all is this, that we have a right to ask that men should at least be honest and consistent. If they must believe that there is no God, and this world is all evil or the sport of a blind chance, let them say so and act upon their belief. They will at least be honest and consistent; but what is neither honest nor consistent is to take all the good things of Christianity, all its hopes and promises, and then turn their back upon the giver.

They do cherish the hope of a life to come, where they may meet again those whom they have loved and lost. They do believe that somewhere and somehow there will be a place for repentance, for pardon and forgiveness. They cannot believe that evil does really and for ever triumph over and conquer good. They take all these good gifts of the Christian faith, and make them their own, and then contemptuously ignore God from Whom alone they come. They leave all the work for God in the world to be done by a few weak and weary workers, while they themselves, though claiming all the good things of Christianity, will not touch the work with the tip of their little finger.

Surely this is neither manly nor honest. It is in no sense at all a fair deal.

Suppose that you were on a foundering water-logged vessel, expecting death at any moment, and you had been watching for hours the crew of a lifeboat toiling out towards you hour after hour, in the teeth of the gale, when at last the exhausted crew had brought the boat alongside, would you think it the right thing to lower yourself into her and remark, "Thank God I am all right now, you can row me ashore ?" Would you not, if you had a spark of manhood