elves down to
die, and say then, 'Reaching forth unto the things that are before.'

So, dear friends, make God's aim your aim; concentrate your life's
efforts upon it; pursue it with a wise forgetfulness; pursue it with an
eager confidence of anticipation that shall not be put to shame.
Remember that God reaches His aim for you by giving to you Jesus Christ,
and that you can only reach it by accepting the Christ who is given and
being found in Him. Then the years will take away nothing from us which
it is not gain to lose. They will neither weaken our energy nor flatten
our hopes, nor dim our confidence, and, at the last we shall reach the
mark, and, as we touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and
humble heads the crown of life which they receive who have so run, not
as uncertainly, but doing this one thing, pressing towards the mark for
the prize.

THE SOUL'S PERFECTION

'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus
minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded,
God shall reveal even this unto you.'--PHIL. iii.
15.

'As many as be perfect'; and how many may they be? Surely a very short
bede-roll would contain their names; or would there be any other but the
Name which is above every name upon it? Part of the answer to such a
question may be found in observing that the New Testament very
frequently uses the word to express not so much the idea of moral
completeness as that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says
that he would have his converts to be '_men_ in understanding,' and when
the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of 'them that are of full age,' the
same word is used as this 'perfect' in our text. Clearly in such cases
it means 'full grown,' as in contrast with 'babes,' and expresses not
absolute completeness, but what we may term a relative perfection, a
certain maturity of character and advanced stage of Christian
attainment, far removed from the infantile epoch of the Christian life.

Another contribution to the answer may be found in observing that in
this very context these 'perfect' people are exhorted to cultivate the
sense of not having 'already attained,' and to be constantly reaching
forth to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and a
continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's 'perfect man.'
And it is to be still further noticed that on the same testimony
'perfect' people may probably be 'otherwis