gave me no water for my feet; you bowed your head in prayer-time, you put your money in the contribution basket, but you gave me no loving overflow of tenderness and gracious services"? God save us from such a comment from him who hesitated not to give his own life on the cross for us!

When we come to enter into fellowship with John, the Greatheart, we find that we can not enjoy our own fellowship with Christ without sharing it with others. John's big heart always had room for somebody else. Christ knew this when, as he hung on the cross, he gave his mother into John's keeping. And he who comes to love Christ finds that his own spiritual joy depends on sharing it with others.

During the last great famine in India, one of the missionaries in the famine district had just seated himself with his family at the dinner-table, and they had begun to eat, when they were interrupted by a peculiar noise on the veranda. A boy and a dog were fighting over a bone. The boy was so thin and emaciated from long-continued hunger that his ribs could be plainly counted under the skin. The dog was almost as thin and hungry as the boy; and the bone they were fighting over was one that had been thrown away by the missionary's servant after every particle of meat and even marrow had been removed from it. The missionary called his wife, and she and the children came run

ning out. The dinner was forgotten in the presence of that terrible sight of human misery.

"We never can enjoy our dinner, John," cried the missionary's wife, "as long as such a thing as that is going on within reach of us!"

The boy and the dog were separated, and the boy was cared for in the missionary's home; but no one wanted to sit down to the table in that house until that awful condition of human suffering was relieved. They could not enjoy their own meal with the vision of that savage scene coming up before their minds.

If we are truly the Lord's, the sight of spiritual hunger and famine will appeal to us, and it will not be possible for us to enjoy our own feast of love with Christ unless we are conscious that we are doing our very best to bring the bread of life to these other perishing souls. It is a terrible thing that we should sometimes seem to be so indifferent to the men and women who are dying of spiritual famine-people whose hearts are breaking in sorrow without the knowledge of Him who is our soul's greatest comfort; men and women who are chained by wicked passions, who are held in cruel bondage by evil habits; and yet we, who have learned the song of jubilee, who have been given freedom by the great Deliverer, are so timid and hesitating about making known the opportunity of freedom to these who are held in such bitter bondage! I pray God that the Holy Spirit may give

us eyes to see clearly the sad ravages which sin is making upon the unconverted people whom we know, and that we shall so appreciate their needs that in self-defense, for our own joy's sake, our hearts shall prompt us to bring salvation to them.

It is only heart-religion that can give us that sympathetic atmosphere which will help us to win. souls. A friend was asked: "What is the secret of Wilberforce's success?" "In his power of sympathy," was the ready answer. He was large-hearted, generous, and liberal; he went straight to the front, and threw himself heart and soul into every project which had good for its object. It was said of Norman Macleod that sympathy was the first and last thing in his character-he found in humanity so much to interest him; the most commonplace man or woman yielded up some contribution of humanity. "When he came to see me," said a blacksmith, "he spoke as if he had been a smith himself; but he never went away without leaving Christ in my heart."

We must not hold people at arm's length with some cold intellectual reasoning if we would win them to Christ. We must think about their condition, must meditate on their need of Christ, must muse on the transformation that would come if they knew Jesus; must pray about them, carrying their personality before the mercy-seat, until our hearts. are filled with the longing to see them Christians; then when we go to talk with them, the heart-fel

lowship of sympathy and love will make itself felt, and will be more powerful than anything we say or do to make the Christian life charming to them.

We must not be too particular as to whom we shall win. Any man, woman, or child who does not know the Lord will seem infinitely desirable to us when we look at them through the light of Christ's love and sacrifice in their behalf. George Macdonald says a man must not choose his neighbor; he must take the neighbor that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies hidden or revealed a beautiful brother. The neighbor is just the man. who is next to you at the moment. This love of our neighbor, he says, is the only door out of the dungeon of self. What a glorious month it would be for us if this first month of the new year should liberate every member of this church from the dungeon of selfishness, and grant unto us that indescribable joy that comes to those who are conscious of having been the instruments, in the hands of God, of bringing liberty and forgiveness to a soul perishing in its sin! Such a happy privilege is within the reach of every one of us. God grant that we may seize the opportunity, and each become a Greatheart in the enthusiasm and love with which we give ourselves to winning souls for the Master!

II.

THE BRIGHT HEART OF THE

UNIVERSE.

This is the message which we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. -1 John i. 5 (Revised Version).

THE supreme duty of a Christian minister is set forth with perfect clearness in this text. According to John's idea, the minister is the messenger of Jesus Christ to announce to his fellow men the truth about God. He is not to formulate his own message; he is not to bring them the results of his own philosophizing or theorizing; he is to bring to them the message of his Master. What Christ says about God is the great substance of the message which the Christian minister is to announce to the people. That was what Paul meant when he said at one time, on coming to a people, that he should know nothing among them save Jesus Christ and him crucified. To Paul's mind, the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as an atonement for the sins of men was the essence and substance of the revelation of God's heart to the world, and it was therefore the substance of Paul's message