THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY Collect. Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Epistle. 1 Cor. x. 1.

Gospel. St. Luke xvi. 1.

The Sunday of the wilderness life, of life as a pilgrimage. As the Hebrews were prepared by the trials of the wilderness, and welded into a nation before entering the promised land; so we find ourselves here in preparation for the coming life, the future, for which the present opportunities of work are given. The moment so quickly passes; it holds in it the destiny of the future. Make to yourself mansions in that future for your soul.

The men of this the men of faith.

world are very often wiser than

We throw away the present as an element of the future, and give ourselves up to vain dreams, instead of using the present as preparation, placing our life within the Divine Will, in all its services.

Those who were overthrown in the wilderness of old were those who lusted after evil things,

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 137

those who spent their time in play, those who murmured. We "upon whom the ends of the world have come" should see more clearly that the children of wisdom ought to use this pilgrimage through Time as a preparation for the everlasting habitations.

Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, prepared himself by five years' test to see if he could depend on prayer for his religious needs, and for temporal necessities to carry out his aims. Then he went his way to take up his work, an ever developing work, part of an evolutionary process. His life was a use of opportunity, "projected efficiency," as Kidd calls it, following on to know, forgetting things behind and pressing towards the mark.

All Eternity to work in, but not one hour of time to lose, for it holds in it what eternity must carry on, or life is a failure. Sickness is not failure, poverty is not failure, death is not failure; loss of faith is failure.

"Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." How much we need the spirit to think and do such things as are right, that we may be enabled to live here and now according to the divine will. Behold we count

them happy that endure!"

66

до дво

THE TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

Collect. Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the

prayers of Thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Epistle. 1 Cor. xii. 1.

Gospel. St. Luke xix. 41.

Prayer is the study of the day; right desires which are sure to work out in right living. We ask that the Lord's spirit may teach us how to desire, that is to pray, that we may obtain a blessing and not a curse. Alas! for Israel; they did not recognize the day of visitation. They did not keep in mind why God had brought them out of Egypt, but corrupted themselves, first with a materialistic idolatry, then with a still worse hard pharisaic formality. The Temple was a den of thieves, the Pharisee thanked God that he was not as other men, and, blinded by pride, no longer "humble servants, the things which belonged to their peace" were hid from their eyes. What wonder that the Messiah who came to His own, and whom they received not, should have wept over the doomed city, left desolate because it did not know, could not see the spiritual gifts God was waiting to bestow.

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 139

Let us look well to our privileges; let us rise ever in ardent prayer, desiring to know what God wills us to become; that we may never decline from any high calling. Let us, each one of us, beseech Him, "Lord clear out the evil from my soul, which should be the house of prayer; and teach daily in this Thy temple, made more fit to shelter Thee."

The mediation of our Blessed Lord makes all our worthiness in prayer, the presence of the Spirit of God gives all our prevailing power. Our Lord through the Spirit reveals the love of the Father towards us; He tells us that the Father seeks our supplications. We are so conscious of sin, of imperfection, of a sadly intermittent spirituality at best, that belief in such personal love going out from the divine nature towards us must be ever a matter of faith.

To look through the intervening instrumentalities to the Father of all, who is the Force in all, is the faith of the humble, ignorant Christian, and also of the learned scientist. How little does the latter know, compared with what he does not know! He is puzzled by the laws that govern a cyclone, or the phenomena of earthquake or volcano. How can he know the great cycle of the Cosmos, the interdependencies of myriad worlds on worlds?

And yet the simple soul who is not perplexed by "the reign of law" or the impossibility of miracle, approaches the Divine Giver in the same way as the wise and learned-the way of

140 TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

faith, love and trust in a Father. The way in which our Lord prayed in Gethsemane, and knew He was answered, though the Cup passed not from Him.

So we pray for sunshine or rain, for plenty, for health, for the means of living, for daily food. Christianity has enlarged the sphere of prayer, since it brought God nearer to us. Do we correspond to the grace of God in us? Diversities of operations, but the same Spirit; manifold in gifts, differing in every one. The road-mender can feel with St. Peter the sweetness of "the precious promises": the poet thrills with delight at the largeness of St. Paul's outlook; the practical man rejoices in the ethics of St. James and the loftiest mystic finds room for his soul in the symbolism of St. John. Each apostle corresponded to the grace of God in his various gifts.