divinity, we believe, so far as intellectual assent goes, that He is the true God: our danger lies in not living up to that which such belief involves.

1. We believe Him to be our divine Lord; therefore of course He must be the one Aim of our life, the supreme Object of our hearts' desire, upon Whom our affection as well as all our hopes are centred. Yet too often our lives manifest no such faith as this; we are far more concerned with and absorbed in worldly aims and desires than we are eager to follow and to obey our Lord.

2. If He be our divine Lord, then it is certain that He is our sole Hope and Dependence. We are not unaware of the weakness and insufficiency of our lives. We know that we cannot lay claim to heaven by reason of our faithfulness in God's service; our only hope is in Christ's mercy.

We love to think of Him as our Saviour, yet in practice how much do we depend upon Him for salvation? We approach Him but little, and generally very coldly, in prayer; we do not strive to be humble-minded and lowly imitators of His meek unselfish life. On the contrary we are full of self-sufficiency, we are sadly lacking in humility and dependence.

3. We acknowledge Him to be divine, and that He is the Fountain of grace, grace of pardon and grace of strength. We are well aware that we have the utmost need of His pardon, that we cannot go on at all in the Christian life without His strength. Nor are we ignorant of the fact that He has instituted the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. Our concern about our confessions and our communions is the proof of the reality of our faith in Him. "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins."

Second Thought.-There are to be found in the Christian world all manner of ideas concerning our Lord and His personality. Men like to construct ideal Christs for themselves; they are fond of saying, My idea of Him is such and such. And people often succeed in persuading themselves that their conception of the Master is the only one they need give themselves any concern about. The Jews insisted upon His telling them Who He was. But all the answer He vouchsafed them was, "I am That Which I have spoken from the beginning." We may not look into His face now, after any natural sort, nor may we hear the sound of His voice, nevertheless that which He spake to the Jews so long ago has not lost any of its

reality for us to-day. If we ask of Him, Who art Thou? He must reply, "I am that which I have spoken from the very first." His revelation of Himself is most clear, written down for us in the Scripture, vouched and interpreted by the Church. He changes not. That which He declared Himself to be in Apostolic times, He is still. Still the Lord Who made Himself servant of all, yet demanding absolute loyalty of His children. Still the Lord of infinite pity, yet demanding the complete forsaking of sin. Still the Lord ready to pardon, but demanding penitence as preliminary to His pardon on our part. Still the Lord Who waits in patience for sinners to return, yet Who at last comes in judgment. Still the Lord Who delights to reward His faithful followers, yet Who will surely turn the wicked into hell. He is a Lord to be loved, and a Lord to be feared.

Third Thought.

There is something very awful in the spectacle of the servant of God going on day by day in the life of this world, ever drawing nearer to the time of judgment, without giving serious consideration to the many things which the Master has to say and to judge of him. He does not say them except in listening ears, and we are often too much concerned with other matters to stop to hearken.

Nor does He judge us now unless we seek His judgment in the confessional. But all our matters are kept in store and shall be revealed in due time. The Father is true, He changes not, His word always comes to pass. And the gracious Christ goes on speaking to the world, through His Gospel, by the voice of His Church, those things which it is the divine will to reveal through Him. The words of infinite truth and wisdom are falling as it were from heaven, ceaselessly, yet for the most part upon deaf ears. The Gospel story is such an old one now to us, that its oft-iteration even wearies us. We treat the Master's words as though they were of small importance to us, and yet we move on swiftly towards the moment of our death quite unconcerned about the fact that in that moment of death those now-unheeded words-every one of them-shall judge us. The Jews understand not that He spake unto them of the Father. Do we understand it any better?

LXVI.

"Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And He That sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him."-St. John viii. 28, 29.

Exposition. Isaac Williams paraphrases the passage thus: "Then shall ye know my union with the Father, then shall ye believe in me as the Son of God. But how is this true of the Jews, of whom He had just said that they should die in their sins? It is of course spoken of that remnant of Israel who believed. 'He spake,' says St. Augustine, 'of those who, pricked in the heart, should hereafter, by believing, drink of that Blood which they themselves had shed. Those three thousand and those five thousand of the Jews whom He then beheld as He was speaking.'

"Then those many thousands were of one heart, and of one soul, and might therein perceive some dim shadow of the unity of the Three