divine kingdom, the citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, the membership of that great brotherhood, the enrolment in the true friendly society of the whole human race, which is founded on the principle of love to God and love for man. In this society, too, the same principle is at work, and Baptism is the means of our entrance-the gate through which we pass into the fold of God's Church, where the Good Shepherd stands with outstretched arms ready to receive us and make us His for ever. Nor is this all which these words mean, for they carry with them the idea of the system and order which follow naturally in the divine kingdom as the result of this beginning. In full accord with the divine order, begun by Christ Himself when He received Holy Baptism, the Apostles framed a method for the ordering and ruling of the Church, such as was set out at length in the Epistle to the Church at Ephesus; and it is in imitation of those rules and orders that our Church is now governed.

Such, then, my friends, is the divine society into which you have been admitted, and I would bid you, in conclusion, to walk worthy of the high calling wherewith ye are called in Christ Jesus. Do you say, I am just as safe outside the Church as within it, then I ask you what right you have to think so? A great king promised to his subjects an amnesty, or a free pardon, if they would all assemble before a certain day within his royal city.

He gave the keys of the city to his officers to admit
or to refuse admission to all who came to the gates.
Some sought admission and entered in; some were
refused; some declined to apply for admission. The
question arises, who were the most safe? Clearly
those within the city walls. Clearly those outside
ran a great risk: that is all the officers can say.
The king still retains the right to extend his mercy
to them that are without. We do not say he will
not do so, but security lies within the walls, be-
cause the path of obedience is always the path of
safety and of peace. Jesus said, 'He that believeth
and is baptized'—he that cometh within the city
walls, he that taketh up his freedom as a citizen of
the heavenly Jerusalem, he that joineth the great
brotherhood-he shall be saved; nay, he is saved,
unless he departs from the way of salvation and
forsakes the path which God has marked out for
him, and in which his Master has led the way.
you think it is a hard way? Remember, it has
been trodden by the great and good. You have
not to follow in an untrodden path. The old carol
tells us of the little page who feared to go out

'Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather;'

but when

'In his Master's steps he trod

Where the snow lay dented,

Heat was in the very sod

Which the Saint had printed.'

Do

So will it be with us if we will but listen to the Master's voice when He calls us in His holy Church. He will make the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Do you hear His voice to-night, saying, 'Christian, follow Me?' Do you hear Him call you, as you stand on this first day of another week, to walk worthy of your calling as members of His Church? Then pray for grace to hear and to obey; try to avoid sin; try to help others, and ever feel what a great and glorious thing it is to be, as you are, a soldier of Christ, united to the holy men of old and the holy men of our own day; to those who have crossed the flood and to those who are still struggling with the waves, in the Church of the Living God.'

с

III.

'Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty.'
Isa. xxxiii. 17.

'Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.' St. John, xx., last part of 20th verse.

NEARLY all the prophecies of the 'Evan

gelical Prophet,' as Isaiah has been called, related to Him of Whom the Gospel tells us, and therefore Isaiah was a true evangelist before the time. His words here prophesy that when the time has come we shall see the King in His beauty.' The beloved disciple, St. John, tells us of the first Easter evening when the disciples did see the King in His beauty, and he adds those glorious words, 'Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.'

My friends, on this Easter evening it may be well for us to consider for a little while what is the beauty of Christ, and then to ask ourselves the question which is suggested by St. John's words— Are we glad when we see the Lord?

And first, What is the beauty of Christ? Beauty is a thing difficult to define. It presents itself to different minds in so many different ways. What

one man thinks beautiful another passes by. There is an old story of days long gone * when the artists in the different countries of the world went out in search of the beautiful, and, by some strange coincidence, in each country was found what seemed to be the limb of some beautiful statue. In one place they found the arm, in another the leg-in each country was found a part; and so they went home to their national museums, taking with them what each thought to be the highest specimen of the beautiful; but when they looked at this single member of what must have been a beautiful object they found that after all it was but a member, it was not the whole. Then their best and their greatest sculptors put their hand to the chisel and tried to make up the rest of this figure and to complete it. How they succeeded was a matter of opinion, but the result was that in each country a statue was produced with at least one limb which could claim to be called perfectly beautiful.

And then the story goes on to tell us how ages passed, and nation after nation collapsed, until the various countries were all welded together into one great kingdom; so that all these beautiful statues, each with its most beautiful part, at last found their way into one and the self-same collection. One day, so we read, a stranger entered the room where all these figures

* Christ in Modern Life. By Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 1872. P. 63.