using their
fellow-men. We may do it in business. We may do it in conversation. We may
do it in a criminal silence. Our hands may be foul with a brother's blood.
And men and women with hands like these cannot "ascend into the hill of
the Lord." There must be no stain of an unfair and scandalous life.

"And a pure heart." We need not trouble about the hands if the heart be
clean. If all the presences that move in the heart--desires, and motives,
and sentiments, and ideals--are like white-robed angels "without spot, or
wrinkle, or any such thing," everything that emerges into outer life will
share the same radiant purity. The heart expresses itself in the hands.
Character blossoms in conduct. The quality of our current coin is
determined by the quality of the metal in the mint. "As a man thinketh in
his heart, so is he."

JUNE The Sixteenth

_SINAI AND CALVARY_

HEBREWS xii. 18-28.

We need not live at the foot of Mount Sinai. It is like living at the foot
of Mount Pelee, the home of awful eruption, and therefore the realm of
gloom and uncertainty and fear. We are not saved by law, neither indeed
can we be. Neither can law heal us after our transgressions and defeats.
The law has nothing for prodigal men but "blackness, and darkness, and
tempest." It has no sound but dreaded decree, no message but menace, no
look but a frown. Who will build his house at the foot of Mount Sinai?

"But ye are come unto Mount Zion." Our true home is not at Sinai, but at
Calvary. There is no place for the sinner at the first mount; at the
second mount there is a place for no one else. At Calvary we may find our
way back to the holiness we lost at Sinai. Through grace we may drop the
burden of our sin and begin to wear the garments of salvation. The way
back to heaven is by "the green hill, without a city wall." It is a mount
that can be reached by the most exhausted pilgrim; and the one who has
"spent all" will assuredly find a full restoration of life at the gate of
his Saviour's death. "Ye are come to Jesus, the mediator of the new
covenant."

JUNE The Seventeenth

_THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE_

"_Show me Thy glory._"
--EXODUS xxxiii. 12-23.

Moses wist not what he asked. His speech was beyond his knowledge. The
answer to his request would have consumed him. He asked for the blazing
noon when as yet he could only bear the quiet shining of the dawn. The
good Lord lets in the light as our eyes are able to bear it. The