true, Whom ye know not. The knowledge they had was to condemnation; saving knowledge they had not. But I know Him-the Son alone knoweth the Father, as being of one substance with Him, and He only can reveal Him; therefore by me only, as St. Augustine would apply it, can ye come to know Him. For I am from Him, and He hath sent me. I am from or of Him, that is, by eternal generation, God of God; and then the Incarnation from His Apostleship, He hath sent me. So St. Hilary. From this he argues very well that this peculiar knowledge here spoken of does imply a peculiar generation from which it springs. 'For if He were a work of creation, then everything which is created is from Him. And how then does not all creation know the Father, if the Son knows Him because He is from Him? But if the knowledge of the Father is peculiar to Him, as being from Him, then the being from Him is peculiar to Him also; that is, the being the true Son of God by nature.'"

Stier explains it thus: "What follows shows us the right method-Because they know not the true God, know not His truth, nor Him Whom this true God hath sent. Thus we have the same testimony which constantly recurs in various forms-He only who knows and acknowledges God in His already revealed

truth, either will or can believe in Christ. Thus the token of the Messiah which they insisted upon holds true, but also it is proved in their own case, and in a very different sense from theirs."

First Thought.-That which our Lord said to the Jews, "Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am," He might surely say with much deeper significance to ourselves. They did not indeed know Him in the fulness of His divinity, nor yet did they know Him in everyday life as the result of loyalty in His service. But they knew very well that He was a great prophet and wonderworker, a sublime teacher and very gracious benefactor to all of earth's miserable

ones.

They knew that He had claim upon their discipleship, for they were sure that He had come from God. So Nicodemus had borne witness, "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God." They could not plead ignorance of the fact that a divine call to better living had come to them through our Lord's teaching. We know far more than they: we know Him as the Lord God, our divine Master Christ. We have no doubt at all concerning His divinity; we know whence He is; He is God out of high heaven Who has taken our human nature in order to die for us upon the

cross. What ought to grow out of such knowledge? We can see plainly enough in the case of the Jews; they ought to have become His devoted and ardent disciples. We are already His disciples by formal profession, yet what are we in fact?

1. We ought to be full of alacrity and eagerness in prayer to Him, filled with enthusiasm for His worship. As a matter of fact how tiresome do we find our prayers; how ready we are to hurry them or put them off. As for our worship, is it not often of the most perfunctory sort?

2. We ought to delight to imitate Him, to pattern our lives after the loveliness of His. We admit the duty of imitating Him, we are never weary of praising the excellence of our model; yet how much effort do we make to fashion ourselves according to that model?

3. Nothing amazes and touches us more than the story of His passion. He has distinctly asked us to suffer with Him, to bear the cross after Him. One ought to rejoice to do that. And yet our crosses are hateful to us, we grudge the sacrifices the Church calls upon us to make on His behalf; we inflict upon ourselves hardly any self-denials at all. Nevertheless we both know Him, and we know whence He is. Are

we better disciples in His eyes than the Jews were?

Second Thought.-Why is it that the personality of our Lord, though so well understood by us, and acknowledged by us as ideally perfect, makes but a slight impression upon us? It is because of our lack of touch with the true things to which His life belongs. Our surroundings here are not His true surroundings; He has but come into them from on high in order to lift us up out of them. We are not content in them, nevertheless we feel more at home in them than in those which He reveals to us. He has been sent by the Father, Who is the True One, and we know not the Father, for He is only to be known through our Lord. And yet we do not give ourselves up to know the Father through the Lord. How might this be done?

1. By daily effort to fix our minds and hearts upon the divine things as the only true and enduring ones. The devout in all ages have endeavoured to do this by meditation. It is certain that only by some sort of systematic contemplation of the celestial realities can they become known to our understanding as realities. The study of God's holy Word, with devout reflection upon it, helps greatly to this.

2. Then we must train ourselves to perceive amid all the changes and chances of the present world its transitory and unreal character, and by comparison learn to rest upon the changeless and perfect things of the world to come. Life's sorrows and adversities, its bereavements, all should be made use of to bring home to our hearts a sense of the stability of the true things.

Third Thought.-The Master's words, "But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He hath sent me," were a rebuke to those unbelieving Jews; but had they been in earnest in following Him the same words would have been their inspiration. So it must be with us, though in larger degree. If we care, if we do indeed long to rise out of our earthliness of life into the true and everlasting things, we may find the greatest encouragement in our Lord's words. It is true that the Father and heaven are far above out of our reach naturally; nevertheless we have in our midst our Lord, Who is from the Father-very Partaker of His divinity-and sent by Him to us. Because He is from the Father He has infinite power to help; because sent by the Father He has boundless authority to help.

1. The same thing is pre-eminently true in the case of His priests, through whose agency