f
them when I am gone? Everything would fall to pieces if I were
withdrawn.' Do not be afraid. Depend on it, you will be left here as
long as you are wanted. There are no incomplete lives and no premature
removals. To the eye of faith the broken column in our cemeteries is a
sentimental falsehood. No Christian life is broken short off so, but
rises in a symmetrical shaft, and its capital is garlanded with
amaranthine flowers in heaven. In one sense all our lives are
incomplete, for they and their issues are above, out of our sight here.
In another none are, for we are 'immortal till our work is done.'

The true attitude, then, for us is patient service till He withdraws us
from the field. We do not count him a diligent servant who is always
wearying for the hour of leaving off to strike. Be it ours to labour
where He puts us, patiently waiting till 'death's mild curfew' sets us
free from the long day's work, and sends us home.

Brethren! there are but two theories of life; two corresponding aspects
of death. The one says, 'To me to live is Christ, and to die gain'; the
other, 'To me to live is self, and to die is loss and despair.' One or
other must be your choice. Which?

CITIZENS OF HEAVEN

'Only let your conversation be as it becometh the
gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you,
or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs,
that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind
striving together for the faith of the gospel; 28.
And in nothing terrified by your
adversaries.'--PHIL. i. 27, 28.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi was the chief city of
that part of Macedonia, and a 'colony.' Now, the connection between a
Roman colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that between an
English colony and England. It was, in fact, a bit of Rome on foreign
soil.

The colonists and their children were Roman citizens. Their names were
enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes. They were governed not by the
provincial authorities, but by their own magistrates, and the law to
which they owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law of
Rome.

No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed these privileges.
They knew what it was to live in a community to which they were less
closely bound than to the great city beyond the sea. They were members
of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its temples nor tro