To all men come these overtures divine. Wonderful these moments when truth glows in the soul like flame in the coal. In hours when the reason is struck through and through with light, men are not far from the kingdom of God. Are not luminous hours, hours of destiny? They are sometimes as brief as the strategic moment that comes to the astronomer watching an eclipse. Only for a moment is shadow there, and then the eclipse passes, so the scientist must be ready for that moment. If all things are ready, the astronomer carries away upon his plate the record of the movement of sun and planet, and human culture is enriched by the new knowledge. But if the astronomer is careless and sleeps during that precious moment, then the great opportunity is lost, and once lost is lost forever. Thus when these luminous moods come to man the one duty is instant action, immediate decision, and irrevocable pledges. The old man, grown callous and hard, may be tempted to reject these moods, counting them mere sentimentalism, and despising them as emotional. A dead soul is like yonder dead moon. What if you could sit down and talk with the spirit of that dead world as you talk with a familiar friend? Suppose the moon should say, "Once I believed in the procession of the seasons. Once I waited for the blowing of the south wind, the arbutus blossom, the tender grass and the flaming orchards. Once I spread my boughs for the birds and sheltered the beasts against the storm. But that is all gone. Now I am practical. I have gotten down to hard pan. I believe in solid rock. No more

perfumed sentiments for me. No more ideals and aspirations." Alas! for the dead soul that has lost its ideals, given up its dreams and reveries, its secret prayers and hidden hopes. The wise man will cherish these noble moods. He will nurture these moments big with character and destiny! So that is what it is to be a practical man!

XIII

NO CULTURE WITHOUT STUDY, NO CHARACTER WITHOUT WORSHIP

"And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day."-LUKE iv: 16.

T

HERE are eighteen silent years in the life

of Jesus. These years, like the throne of God, are surrounded with clouds and mystery. For one brief moment, when He was about twelve years of age, the curtains parted, and we see the face of an eager boy, standing in the Temple, on the Sabbath Day, both asking and answering questions. But the curtain falls again and when, eighteen years later, we catch another glimpse of the young Carpenter, He is standing in the Temple, on the Sabbath, with the sacred roll in His hand. What influences entered into those plastic years of the greatest and most beautiful figure in history, we do not know! Did He ever enter the class room of some noble teacher, as Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel? As Aristotle listened to Plato? There were several Greek cities founded by Alexander upon the shores of Lake Galilee; did Jesus meet in one of those towns the Greek merchants who visited Him later in Jerusalem? And did they ever show Him their books of Homer and Hesiod, and Herodotus? To the north, a day's journey, was that financial centre, Damascus.

What were Jesus' thoughts when He stood in their market place? Where the commerce of four nations met and mingled. To the west of Nazareth, within one brisk morning's walk, were the high cliffs from which Jesus looked down upon the Mediterranean, white with the sails of ships, carrying wheat to Rome. Many powerful influences united to emancipate Jesus from the limitations of race, class, colour, and sex. He was the first human being that loved all races, pitied all, helped all. Other influences must have done something to make Him a teacher, not of the Hebrew race, but of the human race. We are certain that the one overmastering influence in His growing life was the influence of His invariable custom of worship in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Within sacred walls He read and re-read and received into His memory, the great mother ideas of right and wrong, and duty, as set forth in the laws of Moses. Again and again He pondered the story of the national heroes, Abraham, and Joseph, Saul and Daniel, of the Judges, Samuel and Eli and Gideon; of the poets, Job, and David, with the visions of Isaiah. Oft, He brooded over the social ideals of Amos and Malachi. Oft in solitude He dreamed His dreams of a new social order and a golden age. Often, too, in the night, under the stars, alone while other men slept, He saw the rift in the sky, and heard the voices falling, and in an ecstacy of joy and tears left far below the little house and the old workshop, and walked the streets of the unseen and beautiful City of God.

Now the very genius of Jesus' character and the

whole ordering of His life are revealed in the fact that His custom of worship on the Sabbath was an example that He made binding upon His disciples. Beyond any other religious Teacher whatsoever, Jesus insisted upon the necessity and the duty of worship, for His disciples.

That which was vital in His own religious experience was made obligatory for His disciples. "Whatever is best and necessary for the children of genius should be made a duty and a habit of lesser men," wrote a philosopher. Jesus had no artificial habits. Whatever He did grew out of the nature of things. By example and by teaching He taught the custom of worship. "What," asks James Martineau, "had Jesus not risen above that? Could the dull preachings and the drawling prayers say anything to Him? What charm could He longer feel, in these childish Sabbath usages, the decent dress, the restful hours, the flowing together of families, and walking to the house of God in their company. Did not He, above all, live in a constant air of divine communion, and mingle with the eternity where all is consecrated alike Himself a better sanctuary than He could ever find? Yet, He went at Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He went, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day." By Christ's example and teaching He made the Church and its aisles, crowded with young and old, stand by day and night, a witness to the world of invisible and heavenly things.

Universal experience reinforces Jesus' insistence upon regular and systematic worship in church on