humbly and patiently to this
Incarnate Word. Knowledge of the God whose the world and all existence
is, knowledge of Him in whom we live and whose holiness is silently
judging and ruling all things, knowledge that He who rules all and who
is above all gives Himself to us with a love that thinks no sacrifice
too great--it is this knowledge of the truth that saves us from the
world. It is the knowledge of those abiding realities which Christ
revealed, of those great and loving purposes of God to man, and of the
certainty of their fulfilment, which recalls us to holiness and to God.
There is reality here; all else is empty and delusive.

But these realities are obscured and thrust aside by a thousand
pretentious frivolities which claim our immediate attention and
interest. We are in the world, and day by day the world insists that we
shall consider it the great reality. Christ had conquered it and was
leaving it. Why, then, did He not take with Him all whom He had won to
Himself out of the world? He did not do so because they had a work to
accomplish which could only be accomplished in the world. As He had
consecrated Himself to the work of making known the Father, so must
they consecrate themselves to the same work. As Christ in His own person
and life had brought clear before their minds the presence of the
Father, so must they by their person and life manifest in the world the
existence and the grace of Christ. They must make permanent and
universal the revelation He had brought, that all the world might
believe that He was the true representative of God. Christ had lighted
them, and with their light they were to kindle all men, till the world
was full of light. A share in this work is given to each of us. We are
permitted to mediate between God and men, to carry to some the knowledge
which gives life eternal. It is made possible to us to be benefactors in
the highest kind, to give to this man and that a God. To parents it is
made possible to fill the opening and hungry mind of their child with a
sense of God which will awe, restrain, encourage, gladden him all his
life through. To relieve the wants of to-day, to refresh any human
spirit by kindness, and to forward the interests of any struggler in
life is much; but it is little compared with the joy and solid utility
of disclosing to a human soul that which he at last recognises as
Divine, and before which at last he bows in spontaneous adoration and
absolute trust. To