A mother does not fret because her own wants are denied, but it maddens her to see her child starve. A man does not murmur when the fortune of war snatches a sceptre from his grasp, but to see his son reap the bitter fruit of his own misdoing breaks his heart. It is to see others suffer and to be ourselves incapable of helping them that produces the most intense pain. And the greatest sorrow of all is to feel that the great human family is hurrying on blindly, aimlessly, without God and without hope, that wrenches our spirits with agony. To see them living in sin, obeying lies rather than the truth, fighting against God, and hating one another; choosing, as far as this world is concerned, death rather than life, and blindly preferring misery and shame to holy joy and peace.

This was the sorrow of Christ, not grieving for Himself but for others. In this sense, though not in this sense alone, He was bearing the sin of the world. It would have crushed any one but Christ, but He bore it and bore it away; and bearing away the sin of the world, He carried its sorrow away too-after the Cross came the Comforter. We have to share His work and carry it on, and hand it down till the end of time. If we

share the burden of the sin of others, we, too, shall be able to comfort them; if we sorrow for them, we shall lessen their sorrows. This is the power of sympathy; but the deepest sympathy is the result of personal suffering, and here is one of its highest uses. By it we become capable of sympathising deeply with others, and sympathising with them we bear their sorrows, and in a sense become their saviours; and the first step in this redemption is the inbreathing of that Hope by which we are saved.

XI.

CHARITY.

PROBABLY it will presently be seen that the feature by which the theology of this generation is most distinctly marked off from any which preceded it, is in the prominence given to the attribute of charity, or love. Theoretically, love was included in previous theological schemes, though practically it was ignored. Divine sovereignty, divine grace,-interpreted as special favouritism, doctrines of sacrifice, substitution, atonement, schemes for reconciling the supposed opposition of justice and mercy, creeds, confessions, and articles, these and many more similar things theologians and the religious world generally were occupied with. Sects divided and subdivided contended for minute differences of doctrine and denounced each other, yet agreed in denouncing the world which ignored or despised them all. It is not a sweet, a pure, an inspiriting

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world into which one enters in the religious literature of fifty years ago. Churchmen, Methodist, Nonconformist, Calvinist, Arminian, all distinctly separated from each other by sharp hard crude outlines forming nowhere an harmonious whole. Is it better now? We think it is; the differences of system and opinion still exist, but the edges are not so hard, the boundary lines are less distinct, they blend and run together in a spirit of charity and mutual forbearance; and this arises from the growing feeling that Christianity is better than the system of any Church, and, though doctrines are important, gentleness and toleration are more important still.

So it is that theology itself is infected with this same spirit, and instead of seeking or shirking a solution to the problem of life in a divine despotism, it is sought and found in a divine Fatherhood. This is by no means universally the case as yet, but it is the tendency of the time, and indicates the ultimate goal of modern theological thought. The influence, either friendly or antagonistic, of science on religion we dismiss as being but of secondary importance: the modification of theology is not a scientific affair, but a moral one. Science is only the true knowledge

of things, and cannot run counter in the end to truth and goodness. It may dispel some mistakes and disperse some superstitions, but faith and hope and love, obedience, worship, and spirituality, are untouched by it.

Christian love is necessarily manifested in three forms the love of God to man (with which all doctrines must be reconciled), the love of man to God, and the love of man to man. There can be no doubt the dissatisfaction of good men with orthodox theology springs from this last source, and should spring from it. For if a man has learnt to love his neighbour as himself he cannot, without intense compunction and keen suffering, endure the thought that that neighbour may be condemned to the eternal pains of hell. The question then naturally follows, Is it likely to happen? Is the common and orthodox assertion, that unbelievers are doomed to eternal pain, true, or is the assertion based upon misconception, supported by ignorance, and fostered by superstition? question being once raised, two powerful aids to its solution at once present themselves-the pain caused by the oppression of the orthodox doctrine, and the relief to the spirit given by the hope that it may be found untrue.

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