It

districts.' Dockwra was eventually made Postmaster-General. appears that he lost all his money in trying to effect the Penny Post before there was a sufficient number of letter-writers to insure its success; for at the age of ninety-eight or so, being in great poverty, he petitioned Queen Anne for an annuity. Your petitioner,' he wrote, 'prostrates himself at your Majesty's feet, the throne being the refuge of the oppressed subject and of unhappy sufferers, never believing that your Majesty's incomparable goodness and entirely English heart can let a faithful English subject be forgot, and his family languish in ruin, merely for doing good to his country; but that your petitioner shall find speedy redress from so admirable a Queen.'

Pliny Miles, the well-known writer on postal subjects, thus describes something of the routine by which we are enabled to enjoy the advantages of constant and regular corespondence, a perfection of arrangement arrived at through many brave struggles:

'On one occasion (Nov. 1854) I was in the London Post Office, and saw the evening mails made up. There were, that evening, 216,457 letters, and nearly all of them went through every process of facing, stamping, sorting, defacing stamps, and distributing and making up in the bags, during a period of two hours and a half. Just exactly on the stroke of the hour, at eight, the last bag was sealed and ready to go. . . . There were about 600 clerks newspaper-mail being nearly ten times the amount in weight of the letter-mail.'

the

The Annual Reports sent out from the General Post Office may teach us how large a sum of gratitude we owe to those who daily toil within the walls of that extensive building. When we read the statistics concerning telegrams, Post-office savings' banks, money orders, valentines, post-cards, insufficiently paid newspapers, unpaid letters, &c., we cannot fail to be struck with the patience of those who write thus forbearingly of mistakes, easily avoided, which have caused them many hours of extra work: 'Great mistakes occur . . these mistakes might easily be avoided by a reference to the British Postal Guide.'

M. G. M.

Short Sermon.

THE MOTIVE OF TRUE BENEVOLENCE.

BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

1 Cor. xii. 27.-' Now ye are the body of Christ, and members
in particular.'

HE natural body and its members-this suggests the obvious and common fable, whereby so often have been illustrated the relations of the several members in the body politic. Here, however, it is not the body politic, but the body spiritual. We speak commonly of the religious body to which we belong; but some phrase of higher import is needed when we would express what the Apostle means in the text. In Christ we Christians are a body spiritual; and we are each of us, in our particular place and

vocation, His limbs or members, having our powers of life through our union with Him, while many duties are implied in the relations in which we stand to Him and to one another.

Throughout this chapter St. Paul's subject is the variety of spiritual gifts. Thus, in the first verse he writes concerning spiritual gifts;' in the fourth he says, 'There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit;' in the eleventh, 'All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so, also, is Christ. For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body.'

The Corinthians had abused the spiritual gifts, not employing them for the purpose for which Christ intended them, viz. the edification of His body spiritual; each member seeking rather, through their use, some advantage or gratification to himself. The Apostle recalls them to an understanding of their duty by the illustration of the natural body as in the natural body the several limbs are intended to subserve the good of the whole, so was it with their spiritual gifts, which were all to be used for the good of the body spiritual. Now, if this illustration has been well chosen to set forth the harmonious working and due subordination of the several elements in our compound human nature each natural appetite and desire being intended by God, like His supernatural spiritual gifts in the Church of the Apostles, to bear its part in ministering to the good of society—it certainly as appropriately sets forth our condition as possessing the various gifts of wealth, talent, station. We are members ourselves in Christ's Church of one spiritual body, and the several powers and means of influence which God has given us are parts of one whole, and intended by Him to work harmoniously for the common good. We are members of a spiritual body: not only of a body social, and a body politic, and a religious body in the common sense of the word, but of a spiritual body. There is much in this expression. It raises us at once to a region of higher obligations than any which spring from the contemplation of our common nature, or of our ordinary human society, even when regarded in the best aspect. It makes us think of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself-of things spiritual, and reminding us how it is through our union with Him that we are most intimately united one with another; it seems to call upon us to think of each other as redeemed by the blood of Christ and animated by His Spirit; and then, considering how nearly and closely we are each united with Him, to strive for His sake and in His name to benefit one another. 'Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.'

Men are wonderfully ready to join themselves together in the bands of some common fellowship. They feel that for any enterprise such union gives both courage and strength; and, also, each man feels that he has a claim not to be neglected, and will have his claim acknowledged in time of need, if he is a member of some brotherhood or society, and does not stand alone. God Himself, indeed, from the very first sanctioned and established such union in the Family; and as the Family expanded into the Clan, and into the State, in the common order of providential arrangement, so God, seeking man's highest progress, united him in a Church, a religious body, and at last in the

Christian Church, a spiritual body—a body, that is, in which men are held together, not only by professing a common belief and common religious aims, but by loving the same Lord and Saviour, having their hearts the subjects of the same spiritual influence, through God the Holy Spirit.

Men have always been united together, and have acted together, and have acknowledged their common obligations to aid one another, in many forms of union. But if community of age, of taste, of political opinion, of race and country, have been found wonderfully effectual in disposing them to seek one another's society, to advance one another's interests, nothing, surely, can be so powerful to unite them as their fellowship in the body of Christ? Take even the most imperfect forms of such union. How have men clung together in old days for the enduring of hardships, and the achievement of heroic enterprises, through some half-fanatical, half-political, attachment to the mere name and outside of Christianity! How much closer and firmer should be their union who have a real love to their common Lord-a real conviction that they are united in One Body, with one aim and one interest!

St. Paul in the text endeavours to stimulate this, as the highest Christian motive-Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.'' Members '-His members, one by one. My friends, let it be our endeavour to prove our real Christianity by having our fellowfeelings for our Christian brethren so stirred and guided that it may lead to practical efforts for Christ's sake, and minister to each other's highest good. Vague statements as to our being Christian brethren, and members one of another, are but cant and hypocrisy unless we show by our acts, in particular instances, that we have a real abiding conviction of the truth of what our lips profess. The union in the body spiritual does, we have seen, far transcend all other unions-in the thoughts it suggests of Christ and His spiritual influence, in the sacredness of the motives by which it appeals to us, and the resistless force of the helps which it secures. A man who realises to himself that he is indeed a member of the body of Christ, does not mean by this that he is a professing or a baptized Christian merely; he does not mean merely that he believes in the tenets of the Christian faith, and acknowledges the obligation to live according to Christian rules-as he might adopt the doctrine and practice of any human system of philosophy. Feeling, indeed, his weakness and unworthiness, and deeply sensible of it, he still knows and rejoices that he is joined in heart and spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ, as the limbs of the human body are to the head, the seat of thought and life; as the branches are to the tree, from which they derive their sap and nourishment. And this thought is full of inexpressible comfort to him. He knows that this gracious Lord with Whom he is thus united loves him with an everlasting love, and has proved that love by laying down His life to save him from destruction.

Ah, my friends! is this the aspect in which our union as members of Christ's Church presents itself to you and me? Is this the thought with which we continually refresh ourselves, and stir ourselves to new exertion? In our private prayers, when we read God's Word, when we draw near to the Lord's Table, do we understand how close we are

thus brought to the Lord Who loves us? If so, be sure your love— not merely your common, amiable regard, but your real, active, Christian love-will be stirred for other souls besides your own-souls for which Christ died, and to which in Him you feel yourselves wonderfully united. This is indeed, beyond all question, one of the severest tests of our own soul's state; viz. that the more we love Christ, and understand that we are loved by Him, the more tenderly sensitive do we become as to the highest interests of others. Those great works of benevolence for the conversion of the distant heathen-for recovering and reclaiming the thoughtless and godless about our own doors-for training destitute children-for soothing by pious care the last days of the aged and the sickly: other motives may give some impulse by which they are undertaken and vigorously prosecuted for a time; but nothing will make them lasting, and stimulate us to persevere in them in spite of all discouragements, save a deep feeling of our nearness to God in Christ, and our obligations of love through Him to the souls for which He died, and of the all-powerful aids He has promised through His Holy Spirit to all works undertaken for His sake.

But when we desire thus to undertake works for Christ's sake, there is danger lest our energies be frittered away by the generality of our benevolence. But he who is wise will seek for some definite objects in which he can take an individual interest, feeling, when he is brought into actual contact with those whom he benefits, and learns their wants and struggles, that they are indeed members with himself of one body in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us, then, ask our hearts whether we do regard indeed all Christians, whom God has brought near us in any relation of life, as members with ourselves of one body, of which Christ is the Head. And if we do, what kindness must this thought beget! how must it save us from indifference to each other's welfare, from all those quarrelings, or misunderstandings, or unkind separations of each from each, which are so rife in a more worldly community! Masters and servants -rich and poor-refined and uneducated-all members one of another in the Lord Jesus Christ! Ah, my friends! there would be a great change in us if we quite felt what the Apostle teaches; how much more ready should we be to give a helping hand, and say a kind word in season, and go out of our way at a sacrifice of time and convenience, or by any means to do good to each others' souls, richer or poorer, in our neighbourhood..

It is a serious thought, how near locally the rich and poor often are, and yet how difficult to pass is the invisible line which keeps the one from the other. Yet how often have the poor as much to give to the rich as they can possibly receive from them; imparting to them, who otherwise, perchance, might understand nothing of it, a glimpse of the stern realities of life, and of the absolute necessity of being independent of outward circumstances, and borne up by a heavenly power within, if we would have any joy in living, any hope in death. In truth, kindly intercourse between rich and poor, while they feel themselves members one of another-members in particular in the One Body of the Lord Jesus Christ-is often greatly blessed to the improvement of the characters of both.