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coming humility; she gives herself no airs of sanctity. Her dark story is known in the city, and her declaration of the Christ is founded on the fact that He has read that story. 'Come, see a man which told me all that ever I did." She asks, "Is not this the Christ?" She does not throw her message into dogmatic form. This is no evidence of doubt; it is rather an evidence of the strength of her conviction. Dogmatic assertion is often a cloak to cover doubt. When we are most firmly assured of the truth we are most ready to put our declaration of it into least dog matic form. All that we ask is a candid examination. We say, Come and see. We are sure that the evidence which has convinced us will carry conviction to other hearts.

This method of declaring truth is generally the most effectual. Dogmatism repels; but there is a disposition on the part of men to respond to an appeal earnestly made to them to come and see; and there was unmistakable earnestness here which commanded attention. The men of Sychar at once responded to the woman's appeal; they went out of the city and came to Jesus at the well. Perhaps the want of success which attends so much of our religious teaching is to be accounted for by the dogmatism of its tone. We speak too often with a cold air of infallible authority, pronouncing pains and penalties against those who will not believe as we believe. We thus drive men into opposition, while if we were less assertive and more earnest we might win them to Christ. When the Church returns to the spirit of the apostle who said that by manifestation of the truth he and his fellow-labourers commended themselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God, the number of the men of every city who come to Him of whom the Church bears testimony will be greatly increased.

FOURTH SUNDAY.

Read John iv. 31-42.

When the woman was away on her errand the disciples, solicitous for their Master, begged Him to eat of the meat which they had bought. But in His preoccupation of mind His weariness and hunger and thirst had disappeared. We are all familiar with the fact, which proves the subjection of the material to the spiritual, that intense mental occupation swallows up the bodily appetites. It is only, however, in rare and Christ-like men that such intensity is manifested in unselfish works of well-doing. When the dis

ciples pressed the offered food upon Jesus He excused Himself, saying, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." They showed that they knew not of it by their incapacity to understand the imagery which He employed. These disciples were certainly rough material out of which to make the apostles and preachers of the highest ideal life, when, even after some months' fellowship with their Master, they could think of no higher interpretation of His words than that some man had brought Him something to eat. But He is patient with them, and in accommodation to their weakness explains more fully the great principle of His life: "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work."

In these words we have the distinctive characteristic of that ideal life which Christ exemplified, and to which He would bring all His followers. It stands out in contrast to the life of the legalist who shapes his conduct by the formal precepts of a written law. To Christ, and to the man who is partaker of Christ's life, the doing of God's will is a necessity of his nature, like that which impels him to eat his daily food. His inner being is so in harmony with the will of God, he so loves the thing which God has commanded, that he is impelled to do it by a craving strong as hunger. Nay, as men will make any sacrifice for bread, as the desire for bread is one of the most powerful motives to human action and human endurance-so those who have attained to this ideal life will count no toil too sore, no sacrifice too costly, if only they can do the will of Him who sent them, and finish His work. They will find their highest gratification in doing it, and through doing it their natures will be strengthened and developed till they attain to the measure of the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus.

This is the characteristic of healthful life. Legal restriction and formal precept may be necessary in view of spiritual disease, even as a sick man eats his food in obedience to prescribed rules. But that is at best a sickly life which is thus controlled. When, through the grace of God, our iniquities are forgiven and our diseases are healed, the doing of God's will becomes as the food of our souls, for which we crave and in which we take delight.

The transition is perfectly harmonious which our Lord makes from speaking of the doing God's work as bread, to speak of the large opportunities of doing it which are opening up to Him and to His disciples, as

an already ripened harvest. "Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh harvest?" This was probably a proverbial saying, expressing the necessity of waiting with patience for the results of human effort. Men had learned from experience and from the analogy of nature that spiritual results do not generally come at once, and had framed this proverb to comfort the desponding and to warn the sanguine. The proverb exThe proverb expresses the rule, but every rule has its exception; and there are seasons when, because of special preparedness, the fruits of spiritual labour are not delayed. Such a season was this of our Lord's visit to Samaria. He had marked the Samaritan woman's peculiar receptivity. He had divined the errand on which she had gone when she left the well. He had the assurance that the errand would be successful. Perhaps He could see the men approaching whom she was bringing to hear His word. He knew that a rich harvest of souls was ready to be gathered in the alien city. He may have pointed to the advancing Samaritans at all events He had them in His mind's eye-when He said, "Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest." In despised Samaria there were to be immediate results, contradicting the proverb which had availed to cheer the disciples depressed by the discouragements of the Judæan ministry. There was no need here to exercise the long patience of the husbandman who waits for the early and the latter rain.

The Saviour gives utterance to the joy with which the prospect fills His heart: "And he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal." He was receiving even then earnest of His wages of the joy set before Him, for sake of which He was braving toil and scorn, and was in the end to endure the cross; and of the glory with which, for the suffering of death, He should be crowned-the joy of doing good, the glory of saving the lost. This eternal joy and glory every reaper in the great spiritual harvest shares. If we work for Christ and with Christ, we labour for no temporary and evanescent reward.

And in the joy with which we are rewarded, we are brought into fellowship with the faithful who have wrought before us, but who seemed to labour in vain. In the success which comes to us they find the fruit of their fruitless toil. They went forth and wept, bearing precious seed; but now they share the joy which thrills us as we fill our bosoms with the sheaves that have grown

from their sowing. They without us were not made perfect, but when the "better thing" comes to us, they are perfected at last, "that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together."

It is well for us, as it was well for the disciples, to be reminded that we are only a part of a great army of workers for truth and righteousness, of whom some are sowers and some are reapers. This truth found expression in a second proverb which is kindred to the one already quoted. The results of spiritual labour are often so long delayed that the sower is not permitted to be the reaper. "One soweth and another reapeth." The Saviour would have the disciples remember this, lest they should be exalted above measure by the success which they were to achieve. They were merely the reapers in fields that had been sown by the labours and watered by the tears of faithful men, some of whom went to their graves mourning, We have laboured in vain, and spent our strength for nought and in vain. have sent you," says Christ, "to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured and ye are entered into their labour."

There was special significance in reminding the disciples of this when the field in which they were to reap was the outfield of Samaria. The Saviour rises above all Jewish exclusiveness, and would have His disciples rise with Him. He recognises, and He would have them recognise, that even in the imperfect religion and shaded history of the alien people, there had been influences at work for good. The privileges of Judæa had been greater, salvation was of the Jews; but God fulfils Himself in many ways, and even those who were in comparative error and darkness had been sowing good seed, which was now bringing forth fruit unto life eternal.

In the remaining verses of the story we have the literal record of that of which our Lord had spoken in figure. Many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Himsome for the saying of the woman and others because they heard Him themselves, and knew that He was indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. The designation of Christ which these last give in the confession of their faith is deeply significant. They call Him the Saviour of the world. The believing Samaritans were the first fruits to Christ of "the world" in its distinctive sense. They were the forerunners of the "other sheep who are not of this fold," whom also He must bring.

THE

MAJOR AND MINOR.

AUTHOR OF "No NEW THING,"

By W. E. NORRIS,

"MY FRIEND JIM," "MADEMOISELLE MERSAC," ETC.

CHAP. XXXVI.—GILBERT MAKES PROGRESS. | position is preferable to that of a lady who has been thrown over. Clearly, then, every HE more Gilbert thought of it the more facility should be afforded to Kitty for taking he became convinced that he had been the initiative in this delicate affair. Nor guilty of a lamentable error in judgment in would there have been much trouble about proposing to Kitty Greenwood. It is not the rendering of this service to her if she had with impunity that a man who has taken but been a little less wilfully blind. She cold reason for his guide through life allows either did not see, or did not choose to show himself to be swayed by a gust of feeling, that she saw, what any other girl must have and even if Miss Huntley had never crossed seen in her place; her lover's evident prehis path again the day would full surely ference for Miss Huntley's society did not, have arrived when Gilbert would have re-apparently, shake her faith in him for a pented him of his rashness. But Miss Huntley had come, armed in all the suggestive panoply of wealth, beauty, and worldly wisdom, and this had caused lame Nemesis to put her best foot foremost-had, perhaps, as Gilbert now told himself without any circumlocution, rendered it possible for him to escape Nemesis, even at the eleventh hour. The means by which she had accomplished this end have already been indicated, and it is neither necessary nor agreeable to dwell further upon them. She had an apt disciple and an easy task.

By no means so easy was that which, before the month of October was out, Gilbert had determined to undertake. It is no light matter to be a traitor to love, honour, and duty, to desert the girl of your heart without the shadow of a plausible excuse for so doing, and to brave the scorn of your friends and neighbours. Yet doubtless the thing may be done, if only all scruples be resolutely cast to the winds, and this latter feat was more within Gilbert's capacity than it had once been. He did, indeed, repeat to himself certain glib and conventional phrases, as, for example, that a mistake ought always to be corrected, no matter how, while correction remains practicable; that in Kitty's interest as well as his own it would be wise and right to terminate an engagement which had been entered into without sufficient consideration, and so forth; but these things he said rather for form's sake and because he disliked a raw style of argumentation than to quiet an uneasy conscience. Besides, it is a waste of time to seek out reasons for doing what you have already made up your mind to do. The really difficult question was how to do it. Now a lady who has thrown over her betrothed sometimes has hard things said of her; but everybody must concede that her

XXVIII-46

moment; her cheerfulness, good-humour, and insensibility to neglect were as admirable as they were exasperating. The only thing that could be said for such conduct was that it made Gilbert's path a little smoother for him, by causing him to doubt seriously whether he ever could have been really in love with so stupid a woman. Yet he could not bring himself to tell her in so many words that he no longer considered her to be a suitable wife for him. To do that would have been to incur an amount of public obloquy which he dared not face, and which he could hardly expect to live down under a year or two, backed though he might probably be by all the power of Miss Huntley's riches and social influence. No! by hook or by crook, Kitty must be forced to give him his dismissal. It will be observed that he had made progress since the time when it cost him a sleepless night and much expenditure of casuistry to resolve upon cheating his brother. Then he had been sincerely desirous of effecting some sort of a modus vivendi with his conscience: now his sole anxiety was to save appearances.

Miss Greenwood may be acquitted of the accusation of stupidity brought against her. That she did not suspect the man whom she loved of a baseness which, if proved, would have made it impossible for her to love him any longer, is the less surprising because the evidences thereof had not been brought very directly under her notice; but she was perfectly aware that a change had come over him, that he had ceased to take pleasure in the kind of conversation which, however silly it may be in itself, is generally found pleasant by lovers, and that her total ignorance of politics, which, during the summer-time, he had been wont to laugh at and treat as a joke, had now become a vexation to him.

650

She was not a clever girl, but she was a
modest and a sensible one; so, instead of
upbraiding him, she set to work to correct
the shortcoming which she judged to be the
cause of his displeasure and began to read
the daily papers diligently, with a view to
rendering herself more fit to become the wife
As the Admiral
of an earnest politician.
took in the Times and the Daily News, while
Mrs. Greenwood (who was a Conservative at
heart) took the Morning Post, this method of
study did not tend to free her from bewilder-
ment; and when, after carefully weighing
all that she had read about the state of Ire-
land, she took upon herself to propound a
truly ingenious scheme for the pacification of
that luckless island, she was properly rebuked
for her temerity.

Gilbert gave her one look of profound astonishment and then said quietly: "My dear Kitty, do you happen by any chance to know what a contradiction in terms is? You can illustrate it, at all events, if you can't define it. I grant you that it is sometimes employed effectively by public speakers; but then they don't usually make it quite as plain as a pikestaff. If you are ambitious of excelling in that line, you had better take a few lessons from your friend Monckton, who is past master in the art of humbugging his audiences."

This was only a random shot, but it went home. Kitty did not mind being snubbed, because she thought that very likely she deserved it; but not even from Gilbert would she listen to a word against her beloved Vicar.

"Mr. Monckton never humbugged anybody in his life," she declared vehemently, "and what is more, I don't believe you think it of him."

Then she jumped up and left the room, lest she should be compelled to hear more than she could bear.

Perhaps this little scene may have shown Gilbert where to look for the weapon of which he was in search. At any rate, from that day forth he never missed an opportunity of sneering at St. Michael's, its elaborate services, its guilds, its heterogeneous congregation, and the doctrines which he assumed to be promulgated from its pulpit. In this way he certainly managed to give Kitty a good deal of pain; but he might have known better than to imagine that such a device would cause her to shrink away from him. She was something of a zealot; like most women, she was intolerant of any form of faith save her own, but disposed to

Gilbert's be indulgent towards indifference, especially towards the indifference of men. attitude had hitherto been indifferent, but not hostile, and she had secretly hoped that when he should be all her own she would be able to bring a beneficial influence to bear upon him; but if, as he now gave her to understand, he rejected not only Mr. Monckton's views, but Christianity itself, it clearly behoved her to put off no longer the work which seemed to be especially marked out for her. She felt herself on firmer ground here than on the quicksands of politics, and did not fear ultimate failure, because she was sure that Gilbert was noble, virtucus, and conscientious, and that his scepticism only arose from that lack of humility which was but natural in one of his vast intellectual capacity.

Thus began a theological contest of which the inconsequence must often have been ludicrously apparent to one of the disputants, Gilbert but which Kitty's patience prevented from ever degenerating into a quarrel. could be ironical, bitter, and even covertly insolent, but he could not be brutal; and it seemed as if nothing short of downright brutality would serve his purpose.

Help reached him at length from a quarter in which help was assuredly no expression of good-will. The time was approaching for the first representation of Brian's opera, and Miss Huntley, to whom the date had been duly notified, was determined that Kingscliff should be well represented in the audience. However, Admiral and Mrs. Greenwood, after promising to be present, begged off. They hated leaving home; the Admiral had caught a cold in his head, and his wife could not trust him to take care of himself if he were left alone; so they gladly accepted Miss Huntley's offer of a bedroom in Park Lane for Kitty. Kitty herself was delighted at the prospect of this outing until she discovered that, for some reason or other, Gilbert was opposed to her taking part in it. He suggested that it might be disagreeable for her to stay in the house of a lady with whom she was not acquainted, and who was not always polite to strangers; he alleged that nothing but a sense of fraternal duty induced him to undertake what was sure to be a tiring and tedious expedition. The truth was that he objected, partly because he had of late taken to objecting to everything that Kitty wished to do, and partly because he dreaded the conclusions which And yet, Brian might draw from watching him and Beatrice and Kitty together.

heaven knows that Brian's eyes were not over quick at discovering infamy.

The upshot of it was, that when Miss Joy incidentally asked Kitty whether the matter was settled, the girl replied that she had not quite made up her mind, adding innocently, "I don't think Gilbert much wants me to go."

Now Miss Joy was neither a reticent nor a prudent woman, and for some weeks past she had been bottling up her emotions until she was like to explode with the effervescence of them. Nothing more than this comparative trifle was needed to set her free from the restraint of her better judgment.

"Want you to go! I should think not!" she cried, a fine accession of colour coming into her cheeks. "And that is just why you ought to go, and stick to him like a leech the whole time! If I were you I wouldn't leave him alone for one moment, either here or in London, or anywhere else.

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Well, the moment that the words were out she regretted them, and then, of course, she had to explain, and equally, of course, her explanation did not mend matters. There was no real harm done yet, she declared; all would come right; she had spoken too hastily. Beatrice, without perhaps quite intending it, had a way of taking men up and monopolising them, and if the man happened to be conceited or easily flattered-as almost all men are--trouble was apt to ensue. Kitty did not say much, but the revelation was far more of a shock to her than her informant would have believed possible. Not once had it crossed her mind that Beatrice could be guilty of the conduct ascribed to her, still less had she supposed that Gilbert's recent coldness could be due to such a cause. Even now she did not believe the assertion which Miss Joy had carefully left unuttered. It was inconceivable to her that Gilbert could be false; it must be Beatrice, and Beatrice alone, who was to blame. That one who professed to be her friend should be trying to do her a deadly injury (for, simple though Kitty was, she saw through Miss Joy's euphemisms) was bad enough; nor was it without great difficulty that she forced herself to greet the traitress as smilingly as usual on the following day.

Beatrice appeared as early as eleven o'clock in the morning, she and Miss Joy having been driven over in a waggonette by Gilbert, and whatever may have been her sins they did not, apparently, weigh heavily upon her conscience.

"We have come to carry you off for the

"so if you

day, Kitty," she announced; have any parochial duties on hand you will please to neglect them. Old women and school-children can be attended to in all weathers, but Halcombe caves are only open to the public when there is a light breeze from the north-west, and we can't expect to have many days like this in November."

Kitty did not attempt to excuse herself. She was not precisely in the mood to enjoy a party of pleasure; but escape seemed hardly practicable, added to which she was anxious to have the testimony of her own senses as to whether Beatrice was or was not the false friend that she had been represented to be.

Her senses, during the eight-mile drive to Halcombe, were more pleasantly employed than in the acquisition of evidence bearing upon that point. Gilbert, who was driving, only threw an occasional remark over his shoulder to the three ladies behind him, and they for their parts were intimate enough to be absolved from the wearisome obligation of racking their brains for subjects to talk about. Their way lay along a rather rough road, which sometimes skirted the sea and sometimes took an abrupt turn inland, passing through sleepy little villages of whitewashed houses, overgrown for the most part with climbing fuchsias, dipping into deep lanes, where glossy hart's-tongue ferns clothed the red soil, and crossing hills, as westcountry roads commonly do, by the simple old Roman expedient of going straight up one side and straight down the other. During the summer season Halcombe and its caverns are visited daily by herds of those holidaymakers from whom Kingscliff will never again be free, and probably does not wish to be free. All along the road you meet or pass them-four or five of them generally, packed into an open one-horse fly. Not unfrequently they sing as they go. Every now and then they pause, leap out of their vehicle with one consent, and make a furious onslaught upon the ferns, which they tear up by the roots and afterwards throw away. The course of their passage is marked by broken victuals, empty ginger-beer bottles, and fluttering scraps of greasy paper. It may be hoped that they enjoy themselves, though it cannot be said that they contribute to the enjoyment of their neighbours. But on this still, soft November day the quiet country had regained possession of itself; the last of the tourists had long since gone back to native London or Bristol, and the equinoctial gales and rains had made a clean

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