What is it to overcome? I began by telling you and I close by telling you; it is to know that the one great power that is in this universe is our power. We talk about power, and men may grow conceited as they lift themselves up and say: "I will be strong and conquer the world". Ah! it is not to be done so. There is one real and true strength in this universe, and that is God's strength, and no man ever did any strong thing yet that God did not do that strong thing in him. A man makes himself full of strength only as the trumpet makes itself full, by letting it be held at the lips of the trumpeter: so only man lets himself be made strong as he lets himself be held in the hand of God. As the chisel is powerless-if it tries to carve a statue by itself it goes tumbling and stumbling over the precious surface of the stone-as the chisel becomes itself filled and inspired with genius when it is put into the hand of the artist, SO man, putting himself into the hand of God, loses his awkwardness as well as his feebleness, and becomes full of the graciousness and the strength of the perfect nature. And to put myself into the hands of God, what does that mean? To know that God is my Father, to know that my life is a true issuing in this world of His life, to know that I become myself only as I know myself His child. So the soul puts itself into the soul of God, and lets God do its work, through Him, so that that great

mysterious consciousness enters into the life which was in Paul's life. Do you remember, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me"? So the soul which has given itself to God in filial consecration, says: "I live, yet not I, but God liveth in me”. As the child in the household does not know whether the things that he does from hour to hour are his things or his father's things, so does his father's will and law fill the whole household with its inspiration. Know God your Father; recognise what your baptism means, that it was the claiming of your soul for the Father-soul of God; give yourself to Him in absolute, loving obedience. Do not think about it as an unnatural thing, as a strange thing for a man to do, to give himself to God. The strange thing is that any man or woman should be living in the world without being given to, or filled with God. Give yourself to Him, as the child gives himself to the father, as the most natural and true thing in all your life; and then, His power glowing through your power, the world shall become yours as it is His, and in overcoming. you shall inherit all things-inherit, because they are your Father's, so they shall become yours. The little miserable relations in which we live, the way in which we determine to be strong here and strong there, when the real secret of life is to put ourselves into the power of the Eternal Strength, to know God our Father-nay, in the strong words. of Scripture, to make God our Father, by knowing

that He is our Father, and then through Him to overcome. May God grant it for us all!-in different ways, of course. One man's fight and another man's fight may be entirely different, and yet there is the same great fight in life for all of us. May God grant us all to overcome, and so to receive these certain promises!

ST. PAUL AT PHILIPPI.

Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.”—PHILIPPIANS iv. I.

IT is good for us to bring together the story o Paul's life found in the Acts and compare it with the Epistles. The history throws light on the correspondence. We see how he came to feel as he did towards the Philippians. But even if we had no record in the Acts of the visit to Philippi, it would not be difficult to characterise this Epistle. It seems to have, above all the other Epistles, its own peculiar character.

It is not, indeed, marked by theological roots, like the Epistle to the Romans. It has not the intense religious life of the Epistle to the Colossians. It has not the fire and zeal of the Epistle to the Galatians. It does not enter into the examination of special circumstances, like the Epistle to the Corinthians. But it contains a revelation of the richness and completeness of St. Paul's own life as it is revealed in no other. If we were to examine the correspondence which any man had with his fellow-men, each letter might be likened to a window of coloured glass, each window with

glass of a different colour from the rest. Every letter would allow us to see, through its own peculiar medium, some character or mood or condition of the writer. And thus we might come to one letter which would be like a window of pure white glass, letting in the light as if there were no glass there, or only with such added brilliancy as the glass might give to it. So, in the Epistle to the Philippians, we see St. Paul, not under particular circumstances of excitement or provocation, but simply as he was, as his friends knew him, as he was simply at his best. It was the first of the Epistles which he wrote after his captivity at Rome. It was written under circumstances which recalled his first visit to Philippi, and the dear friends and dear friendships he made there.

There must always have remained in his mind a wonderful interest in the incidents of that journey, when he crossed the water and passed from Asia into Europe, and saw, for the first time, that great Continent, in which the religion of Christ has since spread so widely and so deeply, and in such majestic forms.

At Philippi he found a little company of people willing to listen to him. Especially there was one, a woman, who was impressed by his teaching, and became a convert to the truth, and asked him to make her house his home. Then came the tumult in the streets, and, by-and-by, the imprisonment, and the conversion of the gaoler.

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