friends and our first
attempts at being of use. It is well, for example, that we cannot at
once rescue every one out of sickness and poverty, for thereby our
love is compelled to a deeper consideration and to a thousand
kindnesses which find their way to the heart and leave for ever a
treasure of happy memory. Our inability to gratify the obvious and
clamant want of our friend keeps our thought hovering around him
until, at last, we discern how we can confer a better and more
enduring, because a more difficult and thoughtful, gift.

Probably Peter had often passed this lame man before. To-day the two
Apostles have not together as much as the poor widow with her two
mites, and they are passing and thinking as little as we sometimes
think of leaving the needy to the charity of others, when suddenly it
occurs to Peter that, after all, he has what may be of more service
to the beggar than silver or gold. "What I have, that give I thee."
The best help we can give is not that which we can give with the
hand, and which is current coin, which anyone else may give, and
which is of the same value, whoever gives it; but rather that which
we communicate from our own heart and soul, and which is our own
peculiar treasure--the accumulation of a life's experience. To add a
little to anyone's outward comfort is always worth doing; but to
impart to another what becomes life and strength and encouragement
perennially within himself is surely better. Frequently the help we
chiefly need is nothing outward and material, but that which one bare
human spirit can render to another. But alas! when thrown back upon
our inward resources, we are so conscious of our poverty that we
think sixpence or a shilling is probably of greater value than
anything which can come straight from our spirit.

Of the lame man little is told us which may give us a clue to his
state of mind. He was one of those who had been left unhealed by
Christ. Often must Christ have passed him, and yet He had never
spoken nor laid healing hand upon him. Perhaps during the long hours
the lame man sometimes thought of this, and bewailed his own
negligence in not using opportunities now for ever gone. He could
only look with envy and self-reproach on those who had once been
blind, or, like himself, lame, and whom he now saw in perfect health.
His feelings were akin to the remorse of those who imagine that their
day of grace is gone, and exclaim :

Thy saints are comforted, I