1 Cor. 12:31.

That we are in the difficult times of the last days ' I needs, for one that is before God, no demonstration. The difficulties increase continually, and the peculiar characters of evil foretold as to be found in the last days are more and more becoming apparent. Because iniquity abounds, the love of many has waxed cold. Because of the prevalence of error, truth itself is undervalued and discredited. Dogmatic teaching is more and more set aside, for that which is distinctively thought of as "practical," in opposition to it. That which is the first character; of the Word of inspiration, that it is "profitable for doctrine " (and what is first in Scripture really comes first), if its value be discredited, discredits necessarily all that is connected with it. Confucianism and Christianity are then found nearly upon the same level. Confucius has excellent moral precepts, and practically no God. This is what more and more we are coming to, or at least we need to know but little about Him. Morality and altruism, these are enough for us. Look at the jangle of creeds and sects. What have they bred for us but that kind of disregard for one another which is the source of so many evils? Theological hatred is the worst kind of hatred. Religious persecution is the most intense and evil of its kind; and at any rate, it is so hard to discover what the truth is. Bring in from various quarters a dozen professing Christians, and try to harmonize their different statements. Yet good men are good men all the world over, and it is even proverbial that the heart may be better than the creed. Why trouble, then, so much about the creed? Why take so much pains to build up systems which begin to disintegrate as soon as they are built up ? "In doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity," comes to have large application with the growing doubt about so many things.

But what are we to do, then, with Scripture; which certainly is, as to its character, essentially dogmatic ? Well, the human element is perhaps the thing most apparent, and if Scripture is even thus in agreement with itself, a great many people have not found it out. It is even claimed to be the work of the Spirit now to disengage the kernel from the husk and to produce for us a new Bible relieved of things which have long been an incubus upon it. The more the "higher critic" pares down Scripture, the more his love increases for the Scripture so pared down, and he finds wonderful power now in that which, if it be less obviously divine, yet appeals to him the more for its kinship with the human.

Difficulties! why, how many are the difficulties here ? difficulties which who shall settle for us ? For, alas, our faith in human wisdom itself must necessarily be shaken by them all, and one verse of Scripture remains for us, perhaps, as the most significant of its many verses, that, " If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know."

What are we to do, then? Well, if Scripture has lost its power, there is indeed nothing to be done. They are but few probably, after all, who will give up Christianity for Buddhism or its kindred Theosophy. We shall not in the mass leave Moses for Mohammed; and if heaven's beauteous vision has at last failed us, it has at least so made apparent the dismal failure of all else that one can positively hope for no substitute for it. What man or what commit-tee of the wisest men will give us really another Bible? They are better at destruction then at reconstruction ; better in mutilating that which for them has become a spiritless corpse than in breathing the breath of life into any new form.
Well, let us despair of ourselves; that is all right. Alas, it is the world's wisdom that has mocked and cheated us. With the despair of our own, there may be at least a cry to the unknown God, which shall bring unlooked for answer. At least one of the most widely discredited doctrines at once begins to dawn upon us as possibly true, that if any man would be wise, he must become a fool that he may be wise. And after all, sin is in the world surely. It is not a mere name and nothing else. There is such a thing as sin and a great deal of it. Has it not, perchance, clouded the mind so as to produce this darkness which we are burdened with, and in which all philosophies, all fruits of the human intellect, are withering, and are bound to wither? Thank God for the Voice that breaks out even through the darkness with its sweet, comforting, powerful assurance, so strange in its mingling of the human and divine together:"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Have you rest, dear reader? Has this wonderful word been fulfilled to you ? And have you learned to say, Whatever else may deceive, this has not deceived ; here is a Voice which has proved its truth in my inmost soul? Here is the solid footing upon which alone we can stand, with the earth and all that is in it shaking around us. Here is the Voice which can alone settle all difficulties for us, a Voice like which there is no other. How blessed to recognize in Him whose voice it is, the true "human element" which men think they prize so highly, which appeals, even as the science of the day does, to "justification by verification," and bids you verify for yourself- each for himself-its utterances. Once upon the rock here, how the fog clears! how the cold mists roll off the face of nature everywhere! and whatever may be the shapes of evil that we see, yet at least there is no more indistinctness, no uncertainty; and not the evil rules, but the good; not man but God. How wonderful a book then is Scripture! Is there another like it? Shall I permit any, with the highest claim from men's schools or colleges, to tell me what of it I am to believe, or what I may disbelieve? Upon Scripture, from first to last, from Genesis to Revelation, the living truth has put its seal; and what a field of knowledge now opens to me, while the fresh life stirs within my soul to make it all-as far as the finite may apprehend the Infinite-to make it all my own! Christian reader, is this what Scripture is for you? a Voice everywhere alike in its certainty as in its sublimity, a Voice that has power not over the mind alone, but over the conscience and over the heart? Is it something with which you make no conditions, but which claims your obedience, and which you obey ? In every part is it that? in every sphere that is accessible to man? in every department of nature? If all that can be called-is worthy to be called,-science? Then, if this be so, you have found what will be the solution of all the difficulties even of the last days; and amid all these you will stand master of yourself, because in the freedom given by another Master; one who has not received-thank God-"the spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7).

These words are from one of those epistles which, with the fore-thought of the love that breathes everywhere through Scripture, have been provided for us, just for these last days in which we are; and they reveal the spirit of a man who was in his last days upon earth, and with shadow everywhere around him as to his circumstances. Not only was it upon the world, but the Church itself was passing into the shadow. Souls over whom he had rejoiced were departing from him. He was in prison, in the grip of imperial Rome, in the hands of the pagan persecutor, but with a soul as clear, as bright, as glad as ever it had been since the light of the opened heavens had revealed One in whose face was the glory of God, a glory which ever went with him and ceased not. How good to be where he was! His own heart could find no better wish for all around him than that they might be almost and altogether such as he was, except those bonds!
But he draws every believing soul into the same covert of that glory in which he stood himself. God has not given us "a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." We are not Pauls, true; but the sources of blessing which were his are ours, and the ability to draw from them, if only our hearts are true to the truth as his was, no atom of divergence allowed from the path on which his compass guided, doing one thing," forgetting the things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling (or the calling on high) of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13, 14). If this be our mind what can arrest an energy which the Spirit gives? If this be not our mind, how can we think even of facing the difficulties which are on every side? There will be nothing for us but the gloom of despair, or the worse alternative of a heart steeling itself to indifference, yielding to the evil for which it has no remedy, the very abounding of iniquity causing, alas, the loyalty of its love to falter and relax. How necessary for our whole course as Christians that the full assurance of hope should animate us at all times! Conflict there will be. We shall not be able to escape from meeting the tide which is against us. The enjoyed presence of God will not withdraw us from this, but enable us for it, and how necessary for us then to realize what it is to be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might"! to realize the triumph which Christ Himself has accomplished, not for Himself alone, but for us also whom He bids follow Him through a world in which we shall have tribulation, but which He has overcome ! How necessary for us to be in the spirit of those ringing appeals "to him that overcometh," when the history depicted in the Lord's words to the churches is being enacted before our eyes! Assuredly we have a sphere of our own into which the conflict around us cannot enter, and our happiness lies just in being able fully to enjoy this, to make our own the things that are our own, and to live in the life which is really life. And it is just here too that we learn most surely what the world is, in a way not given by the must intimate acquaintance with the world.

But what is the bearing of all this upon the subject before us, in which we are exhorted to "covet earnestly the best gifts "? There are some things, therefore, which it is right to covet, and here, strangely enough, where it is not only permitted but enjoined, people are the slowest to do this. If God is giving, it should be a matter of course that one would seek the very best of the gifts He has to give. But is it so? Alas, gifts as they are, they seem to many, nevertheless, burdened with conditions which almost destroy their reality as such. To seek the best gifts of God, supposes, in fact, a heart not in the world, but with Himself outside it, while He has interests in the world indeed with which they have largely to do. Now here it is that the tangle of things, and the difficulties arising from the apparent hopelessness of the condition, of necessity deadens the desire for that which, after all, seems so ineffective to better the conditions and thus in itself so doubtful as good. The Church is in the world, that Church which Christ loves and has given Himself for it, that greatest of gifts from which all other gifts proceed. Nevertheless, what has been the history of the Church? and what a spectacle does it present to-day? How little is it conquering the adverse element? How much, rather, does the world seem to be conquering it, so that everywhere it must make concessions to it! The Church is in the world indeed, but alas, much more than this, the world is in the Church; and these are mingled together in a way which seems quite impossible to be remedied, the world which should have been conquered being manifestly rather the conqueror, and Christianity being molded in its hands into forms which more and more degrade it to the level of one of the world-religions, if even it be the best. What, then, has come of the gifts with which Christ has endowed His Church? Things widen in influence just as they are lower in character until, in "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man," the positiveness of Christianity disappears, its angles are smoothed off, and he whom the inscribing angel cannot write among "the names of those who love the Lord" may yet, as "one who loves his fellow-men," find his where the vision of the poet saw it, when

''Lo! Ben-ahem's name led all the rest! "

Such difficulties are, of course, difficulties only for the Christian. For the man of the world himself,
the darkness is light just as the light is darkness. For the Christian, they are largely doing just what is most thoroughly Satan's work for him, producing discouragement and perplexity with that dulling of spiritual energy which is the necessary consequence. The gifts which Christ has given are for the Church's equipment; but how differently does that sound when we go back to the time when it began, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners," from now when, battered in the conflict, its ranks divided and opposing one another, it scarcely knows itself! It is just when we realize most what according to God's thoughts it should have been, that we are prone most to the worst discouragement. "The body of Christ! "-but what is a body of which the members are scattered here and there, and hardly anything of the form remains as Scripture shows it? Here indeed it requires the power of the Spirit of God to lift one up to face that which is seen with the brighter reality of that which is unseen. This is what is so sorely needed to-day. We have grown old in the wilderness. The eternal life that is in us seems to be susceptible of weakness and decay like any other life. Revivals there have been, many, but how surely followed, and how soon, by a corresponding depression and degeneration! But one more wave seems wanting, now with the end so near, to lift us right up into a scene where failure any more will be impossible. Shall there be that or shall the Church's latter end be but in terrible contrast to its beginning? The answer must be in the heart of the individual and it must be given to God, not man. That the Spirit abides, we know. That He abides to glorify Christ in His people we must not question. Grieved, insulted, quenched as He has been, is there not yet power with Him, power that He can manifest to accomplish that which to man is indeed impossible?

But let us look more closely at what the gifts that we are exhorted to covet, mean. Gifts are, in the Church, that which fits the body together as such. They are the functions of the members which make them, therefore, practically members. It is impossible, therefore, to be a member of the body without the gift that it implies. It is this that the apostle dwells upon in the epistle to the Corinthians which speaks of the body as it exists on earth. The gifts, therefore, differ from one another, not by reason of defect in the organization, but rather of the completeness of the whole according to God. There is everywhere defect in the members, if you forget that they are but members. If they are independent individualities, then they are most unfitted to stand alone. They are made for each other and for the whole. Do we realize it, dear fellow-Christians? Do we feel in ourselves our dependence upon all others, as their dependence, too, upon ourselves? We must not shrink back in false humility from that last thought. The apostle will expressly tell us that "much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary." We cannot, therefore, put away this from us by any thought of our feebleness. Nay, even the feebleness itself is, as it is put, in some sense that which makes us necessary to one another. Eve was necessary to Adam by the very feebleness which should draw out for her his strength; and Adam too had his side of feebleness which made it not good that the man should dwell alone. Thus we are needed for each other's development; and the ministry of each to each, in order that the whole may fill its place. Alas it is this shrinking from the thought of universal ministry which has, first of all, split up the Church itself into two divisions, the ministers and those ministered to:false in the whole thought of it; and not the less because of the truth contained, which is just what gives the falsehood its fatal facility of acceptance. To speak of what is the most plausible and the most fatal, all have not the gift of teaching,-true; but of this is bred a class of teachers who know not the first principle of their calling, which is to educate others into independence of themselves; and a much larger class of half-educated scholars, to whom the time when they ought to be teachers, of which the apostle speaks (Heb. 5:12), never comes,-never is expected to come. They have resigned their title as possessors of that Spirit who searches the deep things of God into the hands of those more competent in intellect, more taught in the schools of men, devoted to spiritual studies as those in secular occupations cannot be. Thus clergy and laity came about by a natural application of the principle of a division of labor, by which one class could at more ease pursue the world, while the other enjoyed privileges and acquired a power such as ever the heart of man has craved and rejoiced in. But the sense of immediate dependence upon God and confidence in Him became proportionately weakened; the Bible which the true teacher would have opened and made familiar became gradually darker and less accessible, or lighted with weird and distracting corpse-lights of the imagination, which no hand could reach to test them by the touch of truth. F. W. G.

( To be continued, if the Lord will.)