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transfigured, the land is made holy by the light under which it lies, the history it once beheld suffuses its face with imperishable glory. So the facts of our gospel must be ever anew illumined by the truths of our faith if they are to live in our hearts and reign over our spirits as the vehicles of the grace and symbols of the might of God.

The gospel of Christ not only is a history, it has a history, and its history is the grandest chapter in the life of man. Think what these verses suggest, especially as to what Paul had found in two cities, and what through his gospel he had attempted and achieved. Take Corinth, consider what it had been and what it was. Paul had been wandering in the Troad preaching Christ. In vision a man of Macedonia had appeared to him and cried, Come over and help us!" He obeyed, the first apostle to reach Europe and claim it for Christ. But what found he? The men of Philippi "thrust him into the inner prison and made his feet fast in the stocks." He tried Thessalonica, but certain envious Jews and "lewd fellows of the baser sort" "set all the city in an uproar," and forced the brethren to send away Paul by night. He passed to Berea, found there men of a nobler order; but the hate of Thessalonica followed him, and once more compelled him to depart. He next sought Athens, and there, in the synagogue with the Jews and in the market-place with the Greeks, he reasoned daily; but though the city was on tiptoe to hear new things, it could not deem Paul's good news true news. The supercilious Greek, disdainful of the Jew, could only ask, "What doth this babbler say? and when he heard what, either mock at the resur

rection, or in polite but incredulous indifference make answer, "We will hear thee again of this matter." So, weary, disheartened, as far as the conduct of man could dishearten him, Paul passed from Attica into Achaia, and suddenly came in sight of Corinth lying white and beautiful under its radiant Greek sky. 'Here," he may have thought, "I shall at last find audience fit; the ear Macedonia and Attica have refused, Achaia shall give." But what did he find? A city busy, commercial, luxurious, licentious, too utterly steeped in its love of lust and gain to care to expel him. Men of many nations met on its streets, mixed and trafficked in its marts. There was the swart Egyptian, with his chartered ships laden with the produce of his own rich land, anxious to hear where famine prevailed that he might sell in the dearest market the grain he had bought in the cheapest. There, too, was the Jew, already skilled in usury, cunningly making profit out of people's poverty, determined to live in spite of the Gentile he despised, to live at his expense, too, and, if need be, by his very sins. The Greek, of course, was there, supple, subtle, sinewy, proud of his illustrious ancestry, vain of their noble deeds, unashamed of his own ignoble state, unconscious of his own mean spirit, made the meaner by the splendid past he professed to understand and inherit and admire. And over all was the martial, mighty Roman, their common master, everywhere victorious, everywhere sovereign, looking on all peoples as existing mainly that they might be conquered and ruled of Rome.

And to these men, and such men as these, Paul came to preach his gospel, a salvation by grace that

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made all men stand equally without merit before a God who had no respect of persons. persons. The Egyptian listened incredulous, contemptuous: this gospel was a new thing, a thing of yesterday; the peoples around him were but infants to him, he had a faith rich in mysteries and secret wisdoms, older than the oldest of them could dream of. The Jew heard, scornful, obdurate, angry that his Messiah should be identified with the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, angrier that the exalted truths and privileges of his race should be published to the hated Gentile. The Greek loathed the very idea of a God manifested in a Jew, incarnated in a man of sorrows, without visible glory in life or grandeur in death. "The cross was enough for the Roman; He who had been doomed to a death no citizen of Rome could suffer could be no God or Saviour for him. And so Paul preached his gospel to men worse than deaf, to men whose ears were stopped by the thousand passions and prejudices of peoples old in selfishness, of a world possessed by sin. But as they were too careless to be intolerant, he preached on; the very permission to preach was to a man who had hitherto been denied it a Divine boon, rich with

golden opportunities of success. He had zeal enough to supply a whole city with enthusiasm; faith strong and far-sighted enough to conquer an unbelief that was simply perverse and blind. So he preached till he prevailed, till the dark Egyptian became a child of the new light, till into the breast of the Hebrew the heart of soft innocence came, till the Greek embraced a nobler wisdom than his fathers had known, and the Roman became the more loyal to Cæsar that he was so loyal to Christ. And now a wonderful change was

seen. The old antipathies of race and caste and speech vanished, and in their place a new sense of brotherhood came. The men who believed themselves to be sons of the one God, knew themselves to be brother-men. And the new consciousness was so large that it went far beyond Corinth, achieving strange things, things absolutely new, yet full of infinite promise to the history of man. News came from Jerusalem that poverty reigned there. The new sense of kin created the sense of new duties, the wealth of Corinth must help the poverty of Jerusalem. The family of God was a brotherhood of mutual help, and the saints of Judea realized how good it was to stand with the saints of Achaia in the one commonwealth of Israel. And Paul, as, thankful, he watched the wondrous change, traced all to its Divine and sufficient source: "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might

be rich."

1. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Grace" is a beautiful word, expressive of a still more beautiful thing. It awakens our oldest and sweetest memories, stands at the heart of our most sacred associations. Men explain it by "favour," but the richest favour is poor grace. The Greek word which is in its root the cognate of the English term, was more suggestive to the Greek than even Grace can be to the English mind. It runs back into a root expressive of joy, to be glad or happy. is ever the benevolent man, the malicious. The happy must create happiness, the joy of beatitude is beneficence. The glad presence makes

Now the happy miserable is the

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But misery

cause pain.

gladness; to perceive it is to share it. cannot bear joy; its one pleasure is to The devil when most devilish is most pleased; the shadow lightens on his spirit as he sees it deepen on another's. But the being absolutely happy is absolutely good, rejoicing only in joy, bound by inmost necessities of nature to diffuse and enlarge it. Had God embanked, as it were, His nature in order that the fountains of beatitude within it might never overflow, then these fountains had dried up; joy, denied expression, would have refused to live. Creation rose in obedience to the Divine beatitude, was like the echo which answered the multitudinous laughter of the infinite joy. So to the Absolute Happiness the creation of happy beings was a necessity, and of this necessity the universe was begotten. But the blessed must not only be the beneficent; He must be the beautiful and the bountiful as well. These are branches of the same rich root. The Greeks had their graces, forms of ideal loveliness, shapes of such perfect beauty that to have beheld them was to possess a perennial joy. So the ever blessed is the ever beautiful God; His infinite joy works the wondrous glory that makes the vision of God the last beatitude of man. Inner happiness translated into outer form is absolute loveliness; beauty is the radiant garment by which the indwelling joy becomes visible to men. And the joy clothed in beauty is bountiful, its being is giving, to see it is to share it, to taste its infinite delight. It must give that it may live, and the more it gives the more it lives. As the inner sees the outer joy multiplied it grows fuller, deeper, higher. It cannot be happy in the face of suffering, can rejoice