Christian recluses. There they happened to observe a manuscript life of Antony. One of the party began to read, and as he read formed resolutions to abandon the life of peril and temptation which he was leading. He looked at his friend and said, "Tell me to what point we can expect to attain by all our labours? Is there any greater hope before us in the palace, at the very best, than to win the friendship of the Emperor? And in that position, how uncertain and dangerous everything is! Amid how many perils does one ascend to greater peril! And when can we hope even for this? But a friend of God I can become, if I will, even this very moment." So he said in the birth-pangs of a new life, and as he read was changed within, where the eye of God alone can see, and expelled the world from his heart.

The Saints whose example our Church proposes to us are not, indeed, commemo

rated in the pages of ordinary ecclesiastical history. Her fine sense of truth will not permit her to propose as models for warning or instruction any but those whose stories are unexaggerated, and whose graces have obtained the seal of unerring approval. But who shall say that a greater influence does not lie in these inspired records, and the power of a purer light "live inexhaustibly" in these Divine "gems"?

The text to which the commentator of whom I have spoken refers is this: "Brethren, imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good."*

'Imitate not that which is evil,”—a fruitful rule even outside the spiritual sphere. A painter splashes upon his canvas a wild hubbub of colours. A poet interweaves an ingenious labyrinth of rhymes, and insinuates his vague pantheistic despair, or evokes his delirious visions of unholiness, by the

wailing subtlety of a measure, or the irridescent fog of a series of curious epithets. A philosopher or historian writes in such a style as hitherto no ear has heard. And a long succession of imitative pictures and volumes attests the value of the Apostle's warning, and bids us, even in such matters, keep the best company which the human mind can afford, and live with the immortal masters of thought and style, thus "imitating that which is good."

Much more is this principle to be observed by such a dwelling on the character and graces of the Saints of God as is implied in the observance of Saints' Days, and drawn out with loving and pious thoughtfulness in the following pages. There is a quaint story of some mediaval contemplative who threw himself with such earnestness into the spirit of successive Saints' Days, that when each came round he recognized by a tender instinct among

the hosts of Heaven who thought to visit him the lineaments of the servant of God commemorated, and spent some happy hours with him until the bell rang for evensong. This little book may well teach us. to translate this story into spiritual truth, and to learn something of the special features of faces which have before been hidden in a sunlit mist. As we turn from one to another of the chief New Testament Saints, which of us may not learn a little more of their character from these modest lines, from these exquisitely happy and varied selections in prose or verse?

The little text to which I have pointed so often has, probably, a still higher meaning. The Gaius to whom St. John's third epistle is addressed, was connected with the publication of St. John's Gospel.* what is a Gospel?

But

A record of the

example and character, of the words and

* "

Speaker's Commentary," vol. iv. p. 373.

works of Jesus Christ. And so in "Imitate that which is good" the old man's voice acquires a solemn emphasis, and his eye looks far away. The verse is really a little manual, "De imitatione Christi," in three words. Such is all true teaching about the Saints-such emphatically is this little

book.

June, 1883.

WILLIAM DERRY AND RAPHOE.