stant corners of
the world, and urge on you that you are bound, so far as your influence
goes, to protest against the way of looking at these heathen lands as
existing to be exploited for the material benefit of these Western
Powers. You are bound to lend your voice, however weak it may be, to the
protests against the savage treatment of native races--against the
drenching of China with narcotics, and Africa with rum; to try to look
at the world as Christ looked at it, to rise to the height of that great
vision which regards all men as having been in His heart when He died on
the Cross, and refuses to recognise in this great work 'Barbarian,
Scythian, bond or free.' We have awful responsibilities; the world is
open to us. We have the highest good. How shall we obey this elementary
principle of our text, unless we help as we can in spreading Christ's
reign? Blessed shall we be if, and only if, we fill the seed-time with
delightful work, and remember that well-doing is imperfect unless it
includes doing good to others, and that the best good we can do is to
impart the Unspeakable Gift to the men that need it.

THE OWNER'S BRAND

'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus.'--GAL. vi. 17.

The reference in these words is probably to the cruel custom of branding
slaves as we do cattle, with initials or signs, to show their ownership.
It is true that in old times criminals, and certain classes of Temple
servants, and sometimes soldiers, were also so marked, but it is most in
accordance with the Apostle's way of thinking that he here has reference
to the first class, and would represent himself as the _slave_ of Jesus
Christ, designated as His by the scars and weaknesses which were the
consequences of his apostolic zeal. Imprisonment, beating by the Jewish
rod, shipwrecks, fastings, weariness, perils, persecutions, all these he
sums up in another place as being the tokens by which he was approved as
an apostle of Jesus Christ. And here he, no doubt, has the same thought
in his mind, that his bodily weakness, which was the direct issue of his
apostolic work, showed that he was Christ's. The painful infirmity under
which, as we learn, he was more especially suffering, about the time of
writing this letter, may also have been in his mind.

All through this Epistle he has been thundering and lightning against
the disputers of this apostolic authority. And now at last he softens,
and as it were,