earned the condemnation of God with the praise of men, inasmuch as that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. The particular works of Sardis are not enumerated, but of this we may rest assured: so far as she was a dead Church her works were infallibly dead works. Yet works they were, and of such a semblance that men said she lived: God and God only knew and testified that she was dead.

And what avails man's word against God's word?

Her fair name and fame, her self-complacency, her lustre, have passed away: yea, like as a dream when one awaketh, so hath He made her image to vanish out of the city. A temporal doom has long ago overtaken her: may it not be that an eternal doom overhangs her!

Our Lord rebuked Sardis in the day of grace, lest at last He should condemn her in the day of justice.

As once to her, so now if need is He speaks to us, to me. In love He forewarns us all: "Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name? and in Thy Name have cast out devils? and in Thy Name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity."

Shall the dead rise up again and praise God? Yea, the dead also, if they will respond to the call of His grace. As avers the Father in the parable: "This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

"Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God."

2. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

"What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch." The watchful must watch on, the unwatchful must learn and practise watchfulness. Every one of us is either watchful or unwatchful. "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end."

Watchfulness is no easy duty. When Elijah answered, "Thou hast asked a hard thing," he made its coming to pass depend on Elisha's own watchfulness: whence we may infer that the boon being difficult of access, that on which it de pended was not lightly to be achieved. St. Peter, St. John, St. James, for all their love, failed in watchfulness, while their Saviour watched alone and agonized alone.

My God, if watchfulness taxes the strength of Thy saints

who live unto Thee, how shall the dead in trespasses and sins renew their vigil to praise Thee with songs in the night?—Nay, hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? "O put thy trust in God: for I will yet thank Him, which is the help of my countenance, and my God."

"Strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die." -God, Whose good pleasure hath chosen "things which are not," equally of His grace calls upon the dead to strengthen what remains and is ready to die. What He commands He renders possible. "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength." When Isaac asked, "Where is the lamb?" while as yet there appeared no lamb; not Abraham himself can have understood the fullness of his own answer : "God will provide Himself a lamb."

Praise be to Thee, O God, Who both didst provide a lamb for Thyself, and Thyself becamest that Lamb which Thou providedst. Praise be to Thee, forasmuch as the ram offered in Isaac's stead was caught in a thicket by his horns; not weakness, but the sign of his strength holding him fast. Even so, not through weakness, but by Thine own Will, Strength, Glory, didst Thou stoop to become fast bound in the thicket of our troubles: nor wouldst Thou by any means pass out thence except as a Lamb for a burnt offering; even the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Alleluia !

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."-This is one sort of dead man who shall live'; together with Christ's oncedead Body shall he arise. Perhaps for us the main point of that text roots itself in the word will. None predicates of him he can nor yet he ought: he alone says, and says only, I will. He says not, I do; for far from him be lying lips and a deceitful tongue. He says, I will: and the man who has the will to say, I will, has latent within him the power to bring to pass by God's assisting grace the purpose of that good will. His dew is as the dew of herbs, his earth shall cast out her dead.

When God demanded: "Son of man, can these bones live?" even Ezekiel could answer no more than, “O Lord God, Thou knowest." God alone, then as ever, knew what He would do.

We, every one of us, must at this moment be either dead or alive. Let us put it at the worst, and postulate that we are dead what shall we do that we may come again to our border,

and return into the land of the living? Sardis was bidden "strengthen those things which remain, that are ready to die": whence it follows: This do, and thou shalt live. And what if gazing within we discern nothing remaining; nothing even so far alive as to be ready to die? We still can lift up our eyes and look without, in obedience to St. Paul's precept: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." Our neighbour languishes, is weak, wavers, is ready to perish: whoso strives by prayer, or by any other conceivable agency to uphold him, shall himself be upheld; even as Job, praying for his friends, received in his own person a blessing. "He that watereth shall be watered also himself."

If the light that is in us be as darkness that may be felt, let us work and walk by the light that is without us; until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts.

O Christ, the Resurrection and the Life; O Christ, Light of the world and of every man that cometh into the world, call Thy dead out of darkness of death into light of life. again, yea, say again and again, Let there be light shall be light.

As froth on the face of the deep,
As foam on the crest of the sea,
As dreams at the waking of sleep,
As gourd of a day and a night,
As harvest that no man shall reap,
As vintage that never shall be,
Is hope if it cling not aright,
O my God, unto Thee.

Say once and there

"I have not found thy works perfect before God "—or according to the Revised Version: "I have found no works of thine fulfilled before My God."-The former reading recalls our Lord's words in His Sermon on the Mount: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect ;" a precept so lofty that mortal man can appropriate it only in aim and intention, except so far as his being Christ's member clothes him with Christ's righteousness. The latter reading suggests works left incomplete even according to the standard of human completeness; beginnings broken off short, starts without careers, wishes instead of resolves, repentances still to be repented of. We are reminded of Lot's wife, the fig-tree leafy but fruitless, the son in the Parable who answered, I go, sir, and went not.

We look out of ourselves at these and such as these. God help us to look into ourselves, lest all the while we be such as they and know it not.

The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

3. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Well may He Who beyond all others loves us, for that very love's sake bid us "Remember," lest all too late we should remember. For it has been said of old that there is no bitterer pang than in misery to remember past happiness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when the children of the kingdom being thrust out behold their birthright blessedness given to others that are better than they. "Son, remember," spake Abraham to Dives.

To-day it may be that if we choose we can forget; another day we shall not be able to choose, but must perforce remember what we have received and heard. Not through time and never through eternity can we make ourselves as though we had not received and heard.

We have heard the Word of God, the witness of saints, the voice of conscience whereby God the Holy Spirit speaks within us; these we must sooner or later remember.

We have received the Life of Baptism, the Strength of Confirmation, the Sustenance of Christ's most precious Body and Blood; these we must sooner or later remember.

Our startings aside have been from all these, our falls from all these. These we have held fast; or have let go.

And if we have let them go, can we ever again hope to hold them fast? Yea, saith our Judge: "Hold fast, repent."

Let us go forth in the strength of the Lord God, and make mention of His righteousness only.

O God Whose hand is not shortened that it cannot save, Who to him that hath no might increaseth strength, Who didst uphold St. Peter on the waters, convert him in the high priest's palace, restore him by the Sea of Tiberias, O our God, Who hast done all for us, now do all in us. Hold us fast, that we may hold Thee fast. Remember now our sins, that Thou mayest move us to repentance; and washing them away in Thy blood mayest remember them no more. Amen for Thine own sake, Lord Jesus, Amen.

Contempt and pangs and haunting fears-
Too late for hope, too late for ease,
Too late for rising from the dead;
Too late, too late to bend my knees,
Or bow my head,

Or weep, or ask for tears.

Hark! . . One I hear Who calls to me:
"Give Me thy thorn and grief and scorn,
Give Me thy ruin and regret.

Press on thro' darkness toward the morn:
One loves thee yet :

Have I forgotten thee?"

Lord, Who art Thou? Lord, is it Thou
My Lord and God, Lord Jesus Christ?
How said I that I sat alone

And desolate and unsufficed?

Once more the word is, Watch. In whatever mood, in depression if need be, let us watch. As sings the Psalmist : "I have watched, and am even as it were a sparrow, that sitteth alone upon the house-top. Mine enemies revile me all the day long; and they that are mad upon me are sworn together against me. For I have eaten ashes as it were bread; and mingled my drink with weeping; and that because of Thine indignation and wrath: for Thou hast taken me up, and cast me down. My days are gone like a shadow; and I am withered like grass." For this woeful complaint is still a song: even while he lies under the Divine indignation and wrath the penitent sings and makes melody in his heart to the Lord. By Whose gracious help we all may do likewise. Repentance pleases God; and that whereby we please God cannot be to ourselves mere unmitigated grief.

Nor is it any trivial matter which depends upon our watchfulness. According as we watch, or watch not, Christ will come to save or to punish.

"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.”

Shall He come to us 66 as a thief," Who would fain come to us as a Bridegroom?

"Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited