or God is the judge, absolutely the only value of our 'religious' life to ourselves or to anyone is what it fits us for and enables us to do."

My Father and My God... let the fire of Thy love consume the false shows wherewith my weaker self has deceived me. Make me real as Thou art real. Inspire me with a passion for righteousness and likeness to the Man of Nazareth, that I may love as He loved, and find my joy as He found His joy in being and doing good. Dwell Thou within me to give me His courage, His tenderness, His simplicity, to transform my own poor shadow-self into the likeness of His truth and strength. Amen.-Samuel McComb.

First Week, Sixth Day

And as for thee, son of man, the children of thy people talk of thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from Jehovah. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but do them not; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their gain. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not.-Ezek. 33:30-32.

Ezekiel here has run upon unmoral religion in a common form. See how amiable the spirit of these people was, how ingratiating their manners, how ready their responsiveness! They loved to hear about God's will, but they did not do it. So aspen leaves, tremulous, sensitive, quivering, sway with agitated responsiveness in every breath of wind. Endlessly stirring, the night finds them just where they were in the morning. They move continuously but they move nowhere. Many a man's religion is emotional responsiveness without practical issue. He substitutes delight in hearing the Gospel for diligence in living it. He does not see that religion is "action, not diction."

From infirmity of purpose, from want of earnest care and interest, from the sluggishness of indolence, and the slackness of indifference, and from all spiritual deadness of heart, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.

From dullness of conscience, from feeble sense of duty, from thoughtless disregard of others, from a low ideal of the obli-a gations of our position, and from all half-heartedness in our work, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. -Bishop Ridding.

First Week, Seventh Day

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, that say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye fools and blind: for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that hath sanctified the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gift that is upon it, he is a debtor. Ye blind: for which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?...

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!-Matt. 23: 15-19, 23, 24.

The greatest single contribution of the Hebrew prophets to human thought was their vision of the righteous nature of God and of his demands on men. Their supreme abhorrence was unmoral religion. In all our study we shall see the Master sharing their conviction, elevating it to heights they | never dreamed, stating it in terms that flash and pierce and burn as theirs could not. The Master, too, hated unmoral religion. He pilloried the Pharisees in everlasting scorn. Their pettiness, their quibbling, their false emphases, their bigotry, their uncharitableness, their lack of forthright honesty, aroused his indignation. Their religion made them worse, not better; one feels that they would have been improved without it; their religion was the most unlovely thing about them. What should have made them large had made them little; what should have made them generous had made them mean. But to the Master religion meant graciousness and magnanimity, self-forgetfulness and self-denial, high

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purpose and deep joy in ministry, boundless brotherhood and a love balked by no ingratitude or sin. The heights of his faith in God conspired to send service pouring down to men in inexhaustible good will. He was sure that the good God can be content with nothing less than goodness in his children, and that the crown of goodness is a positive life of outgoing. service to all mankind.

O Lord, grant to me so to love Thee, with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my soul, and my neighbor for Thy sake, that the grace of charity and brotherly love may dwell in me, and all envy, harshness, and ill will may die in me; and fill my heart with feelings of love, kindness, and comet passion, so that, by constantly rejoicing in the happiness and good success of others, by sympathizing with them in their sorrows, and putting away all harsh judgments and envious thoughts, I may follow Thee, who art Thyself the true and perfect Love. Amen.

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COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

No one can doubt the central place which service held in the life and teaching of the Master. Consider the parable of the 4 good Samaritan (Luke 10: 30-37), or that other more solemn utterance, where the standing of the dead before the throne of God depended on whether they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, given drink to the thirsty, and visited the imprisoned and sick (Matt. 25:31-46). Consider his sayings, sparks from the anvil where he hammered out the purpose of his life: "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28); “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant" (Matt. 23:11); "I am in the midst of you as he that serveth" (Luke 22:27). Consider even more his life itself. In devoted love to individuals, so that, with the whole Kingdom of God upon his heart, he yet poured out his care on a blind Bartimeus, or a discouraged prodigal, or an evilly entreated widow crying for her rights; in the revealing of great truths that bless and redeem human life; in the starting of a movement that with all its faults has flowed like a river down from Nazareth to revive man's character; in the pos

session of a radiant spirit that throws out light on every side as naturally as the sun shines, so that his very personality has been man's greatest benediction; in that ultimate test of service, vicarious sacrifice, that gives up life itself for the sake of others; everywhere one sees that the characteristic expression of the Master's spirit was ministry. Nor was this ministry expended first upon the amiable and the great. Who can read Rabindranath Tagore's lines and not think of Jesus?

"Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest and lowliest and lost.

When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest and lowliest and lost.

Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the clothes of the humble among the poorest and lowliest and lost.

My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest company with the companionless among the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost."

Surely there is little use in any man's calling himself the disciple of such a Master if he does not possess the spirit and know the meaning of service.

It is evident, however, that plenty of professed Christians have not interpreted their religion in such terms as these. Consider those social evils-war, poverty, disease, ignorance, vice the endless tragedy of which is the commonplace of the modern world! One sees that, with one third of the population of the globe nominally Christian, there must have been some misunderstanding as to what Christianity is all about to allow so many professed disciples of Jesus to live side by side for so long a time with such dire need. Christianity has been content, in wide areas of its life, with some other interpretation of its own meaning than that which at first kindled the passion for service in the hearts of its disciples and sent them out from the shadow of the Cross, the spirit of the Cross within them. "I promise you," cried Hugh Latimer, preaching in Cambridge in 1529, “if you build one hundred churches, give as much as you can make to gilding of saints and honouring of the Church; and if thou go on as many pilgrimages as thy body can well suffer and offer as great candles as oaks; if thou leave the works of mercy and the commandments undone, these works shall nothing avail thee. If you list

to gild and paint Christ in your churches and honour Him in vestments, see that before your eyes the poor people die not for lack of meat, drink, and clothing." One catches there the authentic accent of the Christian spirit. Surely our world would be a far more decent and fraternal place if such an interpretation of the will of Christ in terms of practical service had been deeply apprehended and faithfully obeyed by the great body of his professed disciples.

At the beginning of our study, therefore, we well may examine some of the partial and perverted ways in which we Christians are tempted to misconceive our faith and so to mistake the message of the Master.

II

For one thing, Christianity to many people who profess it is no more than a formality. It is one of life's decent conventions. They were taught it in youth; they have never doubted its theoretical validity; they perceive that its profession is a mark of respectability; and they would no more be thought atheists than anarchists. (But Christ's love for all sorts and conditions of men has never become the daily motive of their lives, and Christ's sacrificial faith in the possibility of a redeemed earth has never captured their imagination and their purpose.

The story of the religious experience of too many folk runs like this they take the heavy lumber of their lives and build the secular dwelling in which habitually they abide; there they live and move and have their being in family and social life, in business and politics and sports; but because religion is a part of every conventionally well-furnished life they build as | well, with what lumber may remain, an appended shrine, and there at times they slip away and pay their respects to the Almighty, Their religion is an isolated and uninfluential afterthought. Especially on Sundays when the banks are shut, the shops are closed, the rush of life is still, and finer forces stir within them, they go in company with their fellows to the church for formal worship. And when it is over they close the door on that experience and go back to their ordinary life again. So Bliss Carman sings:

"They're praising God on Sunday.
They'll be all right on Monday.

It's just a little habit they've acquired."