men of different blood, different education, different history, different circumstances. Yet they have one experience, one faith, one consolation, because they have one God. There are only two points of agreement between the men; they belong to the same race and they have proved the loving-kindness of the same God. Three thousand years between, as well as land and sea, but there is no change in the faithfulness or the compassion of God, "Who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

XXIX

THE ETERNITY OF THE UNSEEN

"For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."--2 Cor. iv. 18.

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O man was ever more religious than St. Paul, none was more conscious that religion must be an enigma to the world. Worldly people could appreciate the Apostle's sufferings, they could not imagine his hope. They saw the vessel driving on the rock, not the passage into the landlocked harbour; the runner in his mid course, not his goal; the scale on earth filled with affliction, not the other in Heaven weighed down with glory. They saw the Cross, but not the Christ, and therefore they counted the Christian career madness, as any effect must be a mystery apart from its cause. Whatever is within the province of sight the world understands, whatever belongs to faith is outside its range. It was therefore the habit of the Apostle to rein

force faith by magnificent references to the unseen, and it was because he saw the things which are at God's right hand, that St. Paul achieved his life's victory.

We begin life with an illusion that there is nothing but the seen, and we are vastly impressed by this physical panorama which passes before us from our earliest days. We do not understand that it is only the symbolical veil of another world. The prizes which awaken our ambition are those which eye hath seen, the goods which we value most are those which our hands can hold, and the applause which cheers us is that which our ears can hear. First that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual, and it is only after we have grown accustomed to our physical home that we begin to ask questions about what is beyond. When we are wearied with our toys, or when some of them have been broken, we make like restless children for the window, and see in the larger life the reality of those things with whose petty images we have been playing in our little room. As time goes on voices from another world fall upon our ear, and friends pass through the veil. Changes

occur which cannot be explained from this side, and the sense of the unseen awakes in our mind. We begin to believe both in the shadow and the substance, but it is the seen which is the substance, the unseen which is the shadow. There is some other world, but this is the real world. Our training goes on, for faith is a long education, and with slow steps we reach another stage. We are finally convinced that the seen is the shadow which vanisheth away, and that the unseen is the substance which remaineth.

Every man must come to this belief in his own way, sometimes through a book or a word, sometimes through a sorrow or a sin, but faith is confirmed by a variety of evidence which is consistent and converging. We revel for instance in the exuberant abundance of summer, but where were roses yesterday, and where shall they be to-morrow? They have appeared and will disappear, but we shall live in hope of another summer, for the flowers are but the garments, often changed, of a pulse of life which is beating through all the years. What an impressive spectacle is a great city with its miles of streets, and its line of docks, and its vast warehouses,

its crowds of people, its public institutions, its stored riches, its corporate life. What created this place? Do you answer capital? You had better go farther back and say brains. The chief force is not material, but spiritual; it is mind. Able men turned a village into a city, and if the whole fruit of their skill and enterprise were laid in ruins, other men like them could reconstruct their work. Again, cities as great as Liverpool are to-day a waste, and yet their very stones are dear to the human race, and their name is written in history. They have bequeathed a heritage which cannot die, and which has made human life richer. Neither their ships nor their palaces, neither their gold nor their silver have remained. What endureth is some book into which a writer has put his life blood. The traders have passed away with all their treasures, the prophet remains with his message, the lasting glory of the forgotten city. Two

Or take the mystery of human affection. people love one another when the eye is bright, and the cheek is red. Years pass, with their burden of labour and their discipline of trial; the hair is grey now, and the form bent; but