lies, and he casts himself upon the child, with his face upon his face, and his hands upon his hands, and life comes back. The servant and the staff are not enough; he who would help must go himself.

The new philanthropy, accordingly, sets itself against all that tends to build up barriers across society. It deprecates that most natural, but most unfortunate, condition of things which puts the rich, the cultured, the good, the wise, in one part of the town, and gathers the shiftless, the ignorant, the reprobate, and the poor into another part; and thus erects a wall between those who need help and those who are able to help them. It cannot see how the bread can rise while the yeast is kept apart from the dough. It despairs of lasting betterment until the wealthy and the educated begin to build their homes on the back streets and take pleasure in becoming acquainted with their neighbors.

Society is provincial, parochial, and narrow. The same people meet the same people day after day, even to weariness. The caste spirit tends to take all interest out of social life. To belong to an exclusive clique is as belittling as to live one's whole life in a little country town. The

new philanthropy would widen society, bring new elements and new interests into it, make it broad as humanity. It would take high and low, rich and poor, the classes and the masses, and establish the fine Christian principle: From every one according to his ability, to every one according to his need. What we want is not that those who are better off than we are should give us bread and shoes, or even district nurses and evening classes; we want their interest, their personal affection, their fraternal love. Nothing else will greatly help us. And nothing else that we can give will greatly help. We must give ourselves.

Where is the successful man who is not helping some brother of his up the steep ladder of success? Where is the happy woman who is not carrying sunshine out of her pleasant home into some house with dark windows and black rooms? Where are the cultured who are not ministering of their culture to those who lack? and the privileged who are not making themselves helpfully acquainted with the unprivileged? Who has wealth, education, social position, and is content, though others lack? Who is satisfied to be a Christian, without trying to make somebody else Christian? Come

down, come down out of the mountain, out of the golden clouds, and bring your blessing with you, and find the need which awaits your coming at the foot of the hill! Find the neighbor who is struggling in a losing battle with the devil, give him your hand; not your money only, nor your interest only, not your prayers only, but your hand, and lift him up.

w

TO HELP THE POOR.

"Give to him that asketh thee. "- ST. MATT. v. 42.

THERE is a great difference between the four Gospels and the four books which Euclid wrote on conic sections; the Sermon on the Mount is not an instruction in mathematics. One would think that a truth so plain as this must be sufficiently evident to all intelligent people. Nevertheless, it needs to be stated and explained and emphasized. Many excellent Christians persist in reading the Bible as if it were a religious arithmetic.

There is a difference between mathematics and literature, between a problem and a poem, between a sum and a sermon, between a geometrical proposition and a prayer; one must be read literally, the other must be read spiritually. One must be taken precisely as it stands; we are not to go around it, nor above it, nor beneath it. It means exactly what it says, and neither less nor more. The other may be only a symbol or a simile. The real truth lies be

hind it, and is to be sought not in the grammatical construction of the words, not in the definitions of the dictionary, but in the mind and heart of the writer. He finds the thought who is possessed not only of knowledge but of sympathy.

As truth broadens and deepens, it gets too great for the narrow reach of mathematical expression. It eludes the grasp of speech. It defies definition. It can only be hinted at, suggested; words can be thrown out in the direction of it, hoping to hit some part of it, but with small chance of striking the centre. Consider the inevitable difference in the definition of a piece of wood from the definition of a piece of music. The whole of the piece of wood can be got into the description; but the piece of music-what master of language can adequately describe it? Suppose that the description of the piece of music were to be read literally, and accounted a complete description, and we should persuade ourselves that there was nothing more in the music than appeared in the words what a mistake!

That is what we have in mind when we say that the Bible ought not to be read literally. We ought not, that is, to think that the whole