pride, ambition, haughtiness, inaccessability, and severity. Cæsarism and imperialism stamped their impress upon titles and governments long before there was any general idea of human brotherhood or of republican institutions, and their dark shadows covered mediæval theology. Kingship is arbitrary and artificial, while fatherhood is natural. The word Sovereign as applied to God is not found in the Bible, and yet sovereignty is the emphasized centre of Calvinistic theology.

Influenced by the corrupt association of titles and false theological conceptions, a distorted view of God has long prevailed in the minds of men. Even the very terms used to distinguish Him, lent their associations to degrade his character. The haughtiness and tyranny which characterized Oriental despots were such important elements in all government, that their false analogies colored all the theology of the early church fathers. Calvin and Luther were also dominated by it, and still later the prevailing current of thought expressed by Jonathan Edwards was Divine Sovereignty as manifested in unconditional Force and Will.

By contrast, how natural, lovable, and fatherlike are the New Testament delineations of God. How the utterances of Jesus and the writings of the beloved disciple glow with warmth and tenderness in their portraiture of the divine nature!

It has often been demonstrated that man's mental and even physical well-being has vital relations with his concept of God. This is an old truth (all truth is eternal), but our recognition of it needs to be awakened. The most impartial and scientific research shows that a wholesome and normal apprehension of God distinctly tends to express itself in harmony and healthfulness of both mind and body. All spiritual quality finds manifestation. God includes all primary causation. All springs, roots, and causes ultimate in Him. Our socalled causation is generally secondary. The Scriptures are crowded with broad and practical promises which have lost their significance because of our gross materialism. Paul says, "Ye are [not shall be] complete in Him." But we have lost the consciousness of such completeness. A self-centered sense of sufficiency

has taken its place, which brings forth the bitter fruit of incompleteness. Internal conditions translate themselves outwardly. Such an order is logical and scientific. What external refreshment can be compared with the glorious sense of divine infoldment? What fair sunny clime or salubrious retreat can equal a dwelling in "the secret place of the Most High"? What strength like the "Strong Tower," and what defence like "His shield and buckler"? With David we can say: "He is the health of my countenance and my God." Weary, weak, and distressed brother or sister, hold in the inner chamber of your soul the healing thought: "In Him we live and move and have our being," and keep it there until its vivifying presence sends a glow through your whole being. Clasp it in your consciousness until you feel the divine heart-throbs pulsating through the channels of your entire complex

nature.

Our trust in the breadth of the divine beneficence has been mainly theoretical, and therefore we have turned to external systems instead of the Overflowing Fountain. God is our life,

and it is only when the conduits which connect us with Him are obstructed, that we are conscious of dryness and leanness. If we "abide under the shadow of the Almighty," His glorious wholeness will impress its influence upon both soul and body. Thought has a wonderful moulding power. "As a man thinketh, so is he." Thought of the Living One, and of His image in us, vitalizes the unseen springs of our being, even down to the subsoil of its physical basis.

When we gaze God-ward our vision is so colored by subjective states, that the Unchangeable wears the aspect of mutability. He is something different to us to-day from what He was at any time in the past. Different observers see Him in the various aspects of Justice, Love, Anger, Mercy, Power, Goodness, Severity, Wrath, Sovereignty, Harmony, Cruelty, Law, and even as Blind Force. The idea of God is unique in respect to the great diversity of its qualities to men. Any name, even that of God, is only the outward label for a mental image. When it is presented to the eye or ear, it calls up a mental delineation which has

real existence in us, whether correct or deformed.

To the ancient Israelites God was a tribal or a national Deity, and even a Military Leader. He fought their battles, and when angry He was propitiated by burnt offerings and sacrifices. But with all their misconceptions, their monotheism exalted them far above the surrounding polytheistic nations. After centuries of slow progress their idea of God became broadened and spiritualized, and in the period of the primitive church, reached its highest development. But a litle later a strange reactionary movement set in towards anthropomorphism. After the Apostolic period the materialistic concept of God soon became prevalent, and colored prevailing theologies; and even in this nineteenth century, its cold, mechanical limitations are only slowly fading. A humanized Deity, having a localized habitation, and possessing parts and passions, lingers with great pertinacity in the minds of men. When our standpoint is located below the white light of the spiritual horizon, a distorted God is visible. The material man sees Him as an