to us of the source from which Christian
brotherhood has come. We are brethren of each other because we have one
Father, even God, and the Fatherhood which makes us brethren is not that
which communicates the common life of humanity, but that which imparts
the new life of sonship through Jesus Christ. So the name points to the
only way by which the world's dream of a universal brotherhood can ever
be fulfilled. If there is to be fraternity there must be fatherhood, and
the life which, possessed by each, makes a family of all, is the life
which He gives, who is 'the first-born among many brethren,' and who, to
them who believe on Him, gives power to become the sons of God, and the
brethren of all the other sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.

So, dear friends, take these names, ponder their significance and the
duties they impose. Let us make sure that they are true of us. Do not be
content with the vague, often unmeaning name of Christian, but fill it
with meaning by being a believer on Christ, a saint devoted to God, and
a brother of all who, 'by like precious faith,' have become Sons of God.

THE GOSPEL-HOPE

'The hope of the Gospel.'--COL. i. 5.

'God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed them,' says the old
proverb. And yet it seems as if that were scarcely true in regard to
that strange faculty called Hope. It may well be a question whether on
the whole it has given us more pleasure than pain. How seldom it has
been a true prophet! How perpetually its pictures have been too highly
coloured! It has cast illusions over the future, colouring the far-off
hills with glorious purple which, reached, are barren rocks and cold
snow. It has held out prizes never won. It has made us toil and struggle
and aspire and fed us on empty husks. Either we have not got what we
expected or have found it to be less good than it appeared from afar.

If we think of all the lies that hope has told us, of all the vain
expenditure of effort to which it has tempted us, of the little that any
of us have of what we began by thinking we should surely attain, hope
seems a questionable good, and yet how obstinate it is, living on after
all disappointments and drawing the oldest amongst us onwards. Surely
somewhere there must be a reason for this great and in some respects
awful faculty, a vindication of its existence in an adequate object for
its grasp.

The New Testament has much to say about hope. Christian