methods of industry, its habits of society, are soiling to the touch; but it is not one's duty to wash his hands of it, or to surrender to its evil, but to take these very conditions of the present age as the material out of which one is to mould a new type of moral beauty. To run away from the tendencies of modern life, that is easy enough; to yield to its evil, that is still easier; but to be in the world, yet not of it, moulding its material, yet not defiled by it, that is the real problem of the modern Christian.

And here enters the new type of Christian character. The saints of the past have been, for the most part, people who have fled from the world; but the Christian saint of to-day is the person who can use the world. Here is a woman in the midst of the social life of to-day. The world about her is frivolous, self-indulgent, luxurious, demoralizing, and she wants to be serious and devout. What is she to do? Is she to flee from such a world as from a sinking ship and save herself while it goes under? On the contrary, in the very quality of her surroundings lies her religious opportunity. Let her stand in her lot and redeem it. Let her live the life of simplicity

amid the possibilities of self-indulgence; of generous service where there might have been selfish folly. That is her battle, and it is quite as hard as to be a saint and as holy as to be a nun.

Here is a young man in the midst of college life, with its intellectualism and its irresponsibility. How is he to serve Christ here? Is it by living under the doctrine of the hostile environment, and withdrawing himself as far as he may from the spirit of this place? On the contrary, his Christian opportunity lies in the conditions which are actually here, and which may be moulded by a young man's strength into circumstances of beauty and good.

Oh, when one sees how much can be done among us by nothing more than just the unpretentious living among us of quiet, manly men; how excellence as much as vice is contagious; how effective are those who without the least posing or self-consciousness, as Laurence Oliphant once said, simply "lead the life," then one's prayer for a youth in college to-day becomes much braver than any timid desire for individual safety. "O God," we pray, "lead our young men, not

out of their circumstances, but deeper into them; not round their difficulties, but straighter through them; not to the getting of safety for themselves, but to the giving of safety to others." "He that loses his life for my sake and the gospel's," said Jesus, "he alone shall find it." That is the call to the sober, righteous, and godly life which can be lived in the midst of this present age.

What is it for which we meet in this chapel, except to bring these two together,on the one hand the godly life, and on the other the present age? On the one hand is this stream of young, fresh life, sweeping through our midst with its capacity for service; and on the other hand is the world of this present age, waiting, like many a dry, unpromising field in our western country, which needs only to be irrigated in order to be bewilderingly fruitful. There never was a time when so many interests were calling for help, or when intelligent service could be so effective. Such an age cannot be an enemy of the soul. It is more like a thirsty soil which is waiting for the water of life. The present age is the best chance God has ever given for the Christian life, and this

land is the best land in which that chance can be met.

What the present age needs is the sober, righteous, and godly life; and what that kind of life needs is just such an opportunity as the present age provides. The man who hides himself behind the spirit of the age, and makes it the apology for his own folly or sin, is simply mistaken in his impressions of the time. He is like many a man in that western country, who has thought himself standing in a hopeless desert when he really stood in what might be a garden of the world. He simply abandons it to barrenness instead of turning upon it the stream of service which is at his command and for which the desert longs. The man who throws a sober, righteous, and godly life into the activities and agitations of the present age is but contributing the fertilizing power to a receptive and responsive world; and the hills and valleys about him will shout for joy at their redemption by that pure and abundant stream. 125

XV

MAKING ROOM FOR CHRIST

(Thursday before Christmas.)

Because there was no room for them in the inn.- Luke

ii. 7.

HE Eastern inn is still, as it was centuries ago, simply a great inclosure where people and cattle and merchandise are gathered for the night, camping out, as we should say, in the more sheltered parts of the great walled-in yard. The place was full on that first Christmas eve, just as the traveller in Palestine sometimes sees such a place full in our own day,

- full of caravans and camels and camp-fires, of men trading, and women cooking, and children playing, and donkeys and dogs resting against the cool walls; and when this humble family so the story says — arrived, toward evening, at the khan, they found themselves crowded out of the best places and had to camp among the cattle in their stalls.