men to be fasting, but to thy Father who seeth in secret. Permit not thy penitence or self-discipline or aspiration to become public. Let none but All-seeing God, whose eye pierces inmost secrets, know thy sacred frame of soul. Alas! how often we violate this precept! How often our public confessions are nothing more than public boasts!

And that's to keep thy Lent."

In light of our lesson, we can not fail to see:
First the intense personalness of the Christian

Robert Herrick.

Personalness

of the Christian Life.

Col. iii. 8.

Matt. xii. 19.

life. If there is in all this world an intensely personal thing, it is the Christian religion, or man's relation to his God as defined and enforced by Jesus Christ, God's Son. Being thus in a peculiar, conspicuously distinct sense a personal affair-having to do directly with the spiritual, invisible One, who seeth in secret-the Christian life is distinctively and intensely an inner, secluded, hidden life —a life hidden with Christ in God. Its springs and primal flowings are to be found not in open meadows, but far back in deep forest wilds and high up on mountain slopes. The Christian life is a secluded life, not in the monastic sense of bodily isolation (for what is monasticism but a life intensely ostentatious and scenic?), but in the sense of modest reserve or spirit bashfulness. To take, then, this hidden life from out the sequestered bowers and recesses and shrines which are its native home, and bring it out into the garish day, and put it through a parade drill, is to expose it to all manner of peril, vaporizing it, it may be, into theatric show, or even freezing it into conscious hypocrisy. No, the life in Jesus Christ, like Christ Himself, neither strives nor shouts nor does any one hear its voice in the streets. It shrinks from all displays, whether ostentatious almsgivings, or conspicuous devotions, or ceremonious fastings, or broadened phylacteries, or processional parades, or advertisements of baptisms, or clerical costumes and badges and titles, or ostentatious kneelings, or protruded orthodoxy of creed, or holy tones, or cants of evangelic brogue. Like planet around sun, it rolls in its orbit of obedience without

parade; like the sun itself, it shines without noise.

Times.

Again: the lesson we have been studying is in The Topic a special degree suited to us Americans. Publicity suited to Our is to a painful degree the bane of American piety. It is a day of nervous running to and fro, and Mar- Luke x. 40. tha-like cumbrance about much serving; a day of organizations, and conventions, and anniversaries, and public meetings of all sorts. It has almost come to be understood that we can do nothing for God or His Church unless we organize and hold a public meeting. Private worship has thus largely given way to public, the closet to the synagogue. Ah, friends, let us take care lest this demonstrative life of ours lead into Pharisaic ostentation and issue in Pharisaic hypocrisy. Let us beware of this promiscuous, outdoor, garish life, where the café supplants the closet. Let the modesty of Nature be to us a parable. Her reservoirs are subterranean.

"Yon clear spring, that, 'midst its herbs,
Wells softly forth, and visits the strong roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does."

Let activity and modesty go hand in hand. So
shall we endure, as seeing Him who is invisible.

W. C. Bryant.

Heb. xi. 27.

wards.

Lastly: Observe the nature of the two rewards The Two Rewhich Christ's Doctrine of Worship sets forth. Alike of the ostentatious almsgiver, and petitioner, and faster, the Mountain Teacher says: "Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” They receive what they demand-the praise of

Rev. ii. 17.

Rom. viii. 19.
Matt. xiii. 43.

Collect.

men. But it is a superficial, transient, hollow glory. Moreover, it is the only reward they will ever receive, here or hereafter: "They have in full their reward." But to the unobtrusive almsgiver, and petitioner, and faster, the Lord says: "Thy Father, who seeth in secret, Himself will reward thee." What though thy devotion is unknown! Better it is to have God's reward than man's. Better it is to eat of the hidden manna, and own the white stone with the new name written thereon, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it, than to stalk through the community, redolent with the odors of sanctity. Nor shall thy reward always be in secret. There is a day coming when the Lord's secret ones shall receive their open manifestation as the sons of God. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. God grant that you and I may share in that glorious and everlasting apocalypse!

Almighty and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service, grant, we beseech Thee, that we may so faithfully serve Thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain Thy heavenly promises, through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.