:

part by and bye when the freshness of your life begins to wear out. Now do you know that, even as far back as the first chapter in the Bible, you are taught differently? You will ask how that can be. It is thus. When we are being told of the several works which GOD performed on the seven days of the week, it is always said, The evening and the morning were the second, or third, or whatever day it might be the evening and the morning, not as we generally say, the morning and the evening. But GOD's reckoning is different. He puts the evening first, and the morning last. He sets the darkness before the light. He says, "Ye must through much tribulation enter into My Kingdom." Satan, on the other hand, puts all the bright and pretty things he has to offer in the first place, and then, by and bye, we find out-but not till by and bye-that "the wages of sin is death.” Our dear LORD begins His Infancy for Himself, begins the new year for all of us by pain: yes, and by the shedding of His most precious Blood.

I know it seems hard to tell children that they are not to care for pain. But I will tell you what I was reading the other day. We have a battle to fight, as you all know a very hard, and cruel, and fierce battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And whatever it may cost us, we must and we will get the better of them. Now, perhaps you have heard that about a year ago we were fighting against the Chinese; and it so fell out that with

three ships, our soldiers and sailors had to force their way up a river, the banks of which were fortified against us. It is one of the very few times in which Englishmen have been beaten; but why I speak to you about it you shall hear. When the artillerymen, who have to do with firing the cannons on board ship, are engaged in their work, they are waited upon by boys not older than most of you are, who go down into the magazines below and fetch up the gunpowder, as it is wanted. They are called powder-monkeys, because they are so little, and have to be so active. Well, one of these, who had been busily employed all the morning, and who had seen three or four of his little playfellows shot down before his face, and who himself had been terribly cut about with broken bits of wood hit this way and that way by cannonballs, was bringing up more powder, when the captain of the gun, pitying such a poor little boy in such danger, told him to go down below and keep quiet. "No:" he said, "I don't care a straw what happens to me, only don't let those Chinamen beat us." Now, what he said in an earthly battle, that you ought to say in a spiritual battle. As S. Paul says, "They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible." It does not matter, or it ought not to matter, how much we suffer, how much we labour, how much, to use the common expression, we get knocked about, so that only we do not allow our great enemies to beat us at last. And

this is what our LORD set us an example of on this very day. He said Himself, "For this purpose the Son of GOD was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." But how long did He wait before He began to destroy those works? Only eight days. Only eight days. Then, however painful it were, whatever were the griefs of His Blessed Mother, and His own shrinking as an Infant from suffering, He so ordered it that He should submit to circumcision, and so obey the law, and leave us an example.

How leave us an example? You know what it says in the Collect: "Grant us the true circumcision of the spirit." That true circumcision means, that we should give up, and cut off, and put away from us whatever is against the will of GOD; just as you would cut off from a plant any branch or bough which was hurtful to the whole tree; just what our LORD means when He says, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee."

When I first came to the College, there was a vine, which was the largest and best looking of all our vines it sent out great shoots, much more than any other, and the leaves were much richer and more plentiful. But, and what a but that is it never used to yield a single grape. At last, one day when I went out, I found this vine almost cut down to the ground; instead of covering the whole side of the wall, it did not rise a yard above the bed; and I felt quite angry that

any one could have so destroyed it. But the gardener told me that this was the only way to make it bear fruit; that it was too rank, too fertile; that when it grew up again, instead of spending all its strength on leaves, it would bear grapes also. And he was quite right, for in process of time so it did.

And so, Children, when I wish you, as I do with all my heart, a happy New Year, it may be that I am wishing you some trouble and some grief and some temptation in its course. For GOD may see

that the year cannot be really happy for you unless you suffer these things; just as the gardener saw that it could not be really well for that vine, unless the boughs that were too strong for it, and that sucked up all its strength, were cut away. And there is the comfort, you know, that if we are really trying to serve Him and to please Him, He will so order things that, whether they are for our present happiness or not, at all events they shall be for our eternal good. In one sense it is a sad thing that the year should begin with such a Feast as this. A day of pain to a poor little innocent Infant. But that pain was the beginning of our salvation. That pain and that sorrow grew and grew till they came to the full on Good Friday. And then they soon ended in Easter, just as S. Paul says, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

READING IX.

"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain.” I COR. ix. 24.

THERE was once on a time a village, a poor, miserable, filthy, decaying village, in the dominions of a Great King. Why this Great King allowed it so to be; why He permitted the poor inhabitants to dwell in such wretched cottages, to be subject to all manner of sicknesses, to be used to such a doleful climate, when He might, by one word, have removed them into a glorious country, where the sun ever shines, where there is perpetual spring, where the flowers are always in blossom, nay, where, as I have read in a very old Book, "the sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself," and more wonderful still, where "the inhabitant shall not say I am sick;" why the King, I say, permitted all these things, great and good as He was, neither can I tell you, nor could the wisest man in this world explain. But so it was.

Yet He did not leave the inhabitants of that village altogether without hope. He appointed means whereby His banished ones (for all these had once dwelt in His palace, and had been banished thence by their own fault) should return to Him. And this was the way. I will tell you what I myself