on, and the younger ones do not seem to be brought into the godly ways in youth, which would signify real reformation. Still the old dangers seem to get head. Idleness, unchastity, Sabbath-breaking, bad society—if we really want to amend our ways, and bring our people back to God, from whom they have so far departed— these are the things that have to be set to rights; fathers and mothers breeding up their boys and girls in pious and holy ways, showing them good examples at home, and exercising a real control over them when they come to be old enough to be in danger of breaking away into serious and fatal sin.

And all this time we are very well contented with ourselves. We pride ourselves that we are Christians; we pity those who have not heard of Christ, and often give our money and help to send missionaries among them; and it is well done. But what is to be said if our own parishes and our own families are only halfChristian in their way of living? We hope to do something to help the poor Africans of Zululand to own Christ and to serve Him; but, alas! hardly one in twelve of us cared enough for Christ to come this morning to the holy feast which He has Himself invited us to. We hear tales of heathen vice, and are eager to bring the poor ignorant people to a sense of Christian purity and virtue. Must I venture to allude to the like sub

ject at home, and ask whether it is an uncommon thing in a Christian village-yes, a village more than one thousand years Christian-to know of children born, not in holy wedlock, but in grievous sin?

Yet I do not know that all this makes us unhappy, as it ought to do, and sets us, fathers, mothers, neighbours, friends, upon the earnest efforts at general reformation which are needed. No. I imagine that, on the whole, we are not ill-contented with ourselves, nor disposed to think that we have any need of any searching or thorough repentance and reformation.

But how must God be looking at us all this time? How do we stand in His sight? Will He be satisfied with us because we are contented with ourselves?

O brethren, would that His Holy Spirit might so touch our hearts with the grace of deep and true repentance, that we might not be satisfied with all this half-service, which continually slips further and further away from the devotion which He requires, but with true hearts, and real earnestness of spirit, learn to give ourselves up to Him in His holy Church on earth, that He may acknowledge us as His when He returns to judgment.

The Envisible World: Angels

ST. JOHN i.

51. And He saith unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending ant descending upon the Son of Man.

HIS is one of those passages of Holy Scripture,

THIS

brethren, in which a slight change in the meaning of a word between the time of the translation of the Bible into English and the present, has obscured the meaning of the text. There are a good many instances of the same kind, which those who read the Scriptures in the original are familiar with. They are sometimes of less consequence, sometimes of greater. In the present case, the change has been a considerable loss, for I imagine that it has operated to keep somewhat out of the sight of English readers a great and blessed truth.

Hereafter” ye shall see Heaven opened. What time is meant by the word "hereafter?" Usage, arising I believe from an unfortunately very common contrast

between here and hereafter, has had the effect of throwing forward the meaning of the word “hereafter,” till it is understood to mean the next world,-some time far future: anyway not the present: for the present time and place are meant by here: and hereafter seems to signify a time and place different from the present, and not to begin till here is past.

I might illustrate this by quotations of every kind; but there is no need. Suffice it to say that this is not the meaning of hereafter, either in the Bible or the Prayer Book. The antithesis between here and hereafter which has warped the sense of it, is of later growth than that simple age. In the Bible and Prayer Book it means "from this time forward," "immediately," "beginning now," from this very moment. You will find it in this sense in the Confession and the Absolution in our daily prayers, and eminently in this great verse of St. John.

The "hereafter" when the good and holy angels of God are busy ascending and descending upon the Son of God, serving spirits, ministering to those who are heirs of salvation in Him, is not a distant future taking place I know not where, and beginning I know not when, but it is now; it has begun already; it began when the Lord came; it had begun when the Lord spoke these words, and pointed them with that emphatic

"Verily, verily," which always introduces some truth of signal importance. Even now, from that old day forward, now,—yes, in the midst of this forgetful and unspiritual world, the holy angels are ascending and descending, doing, in the strength and by the mission of God, good helpful works of ministration to the Church the Body of Christ. How far each one of us baptized into Christ has his own guardian, to whose care he is specially given, I cannot venture to say with confidence ; but no person who considers what our Lord says in the tenth verse of the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew, can venture, I think, to be confident in denying it.

To a very great many people, it is to be feared, and that even in a Christian country like this, the Invisible World, and the beings by whom it is peopled, are as if they were not. They recognise very clearly the importance and interest of all the things which they can see with their eyes. They are very busy with the tangible things that are round about them; but for things invisible, for things spiritual, they have neither care, nor hardly belief. They think it idle and trifling to talk or think of such things. Even the souls of the dead, really alive as we know them to be, alive in their own place as truly as we are alive upon the earth, are to them no more, absolutely no more: but the other beings, the good and evil angels, the one continually doing the commands