nly going
contrary to the known law of God, but also a falling beneath a divine
ideal which is capable of realisation. And in regard to our Christian
life, if God has flung open His temple-gates and said to us, 'Come in,
My child, and dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and abide
there under the shadow of the Almighty, finding protection and communion
and companionship in My worship,' there can be nothing more insulting to
Him, and nothing more fatally indicative of the alienation of our hearts
from Him, than that we should refuse to obey the merciful invitation.

What should we say of a subject who never presented himself in the court
to which he had the right of free _entree?_ His absence would be a mark
of disloyalty, and would be taken as a warning-bell in preparation for
his rebellion. What should we say of a son or a daughter, living in the
same city with their parents, who never crossed the threshold of the
father's house, but that they had lost the spirit of a child, and that
if there was no desire to be near there could be no love?

So, if we will ask ourselves, 'How often do I use this possibility of
communion with God, which might irradiate all my daily life?' I think we
shall need little else, in the nature of evidence, that our piety and
our religious experience are terribly stunted and dwarfed, in comparison
with what they ought to be.

There is an old saying, 'He that can tell how often he has thought of
God in a day has thought of Him too seldom.' I dare say many of us would
have little difficulty in counting on the fingers of one hand, and
perhaps not needing them all, the number of times in which, to-day, our
thoughts have gone heavenwards. What we may be is what we ought to be,
and not to use the prerogatives of our position is the worst of sins.

Again, my text suggests to us what every Christian life will hereafter
perfectly be.

Some commentators take the words of my text to refer only to the
communion of saints from the earth, with the glorified angels, in and
after the Resurrection. That is a poor interpretation, for heaven is
here to-day. But still there is a truth in the interpretation which we
need not neglect. Only let us remember that nothing--so far as Scripture
teaches us--begins yonder except the full reaping of the fruits of what
has been sown here, and that if a man's feet have not learned the path
into the Temple when he was here upon earth, death will not be the guide
for