of Bethesda Parish. Few parishes in the land outside the largest cities have wider opportunities, or richer equipment. The ideal has been set very high. Make your exertions proportionate. Avoid partizanship. Remember you are the one Parish in Saratoga and so conduct your services that your brethren from every state shall love to worship here. "Be at peace among yourselves." Never forget that your situation calls for the devoted labor of every communicant. Commend in your daily prayer this church to God. Be present at the Supper of the Lord. Take your place in divine worship. The absence from the Sunday service, save for the gravest cause, of child, woman, man, vestryman, is treason to the Church, a betrayal of a divine trust, a violation of the will and spirit of the lost leader. You fear the active service of God will take your time, will interfere with your vocation. No. Think of your rector. Think of Moses. Do you endure! Devotion in this world to the Church of Jesus Christ compacts and adorns the character, exalts the soul, achieves the fame, establishes the usefulness of even the humblest saint. As you show that mind it will bless your soul, your home, and make your church a spiritual splendor, a national beacon. Who will take his place? God's work must not languish. Man on the Vestry, Woman in any of these charities, missions, sacred activities, you must rise to something like his zeal, resolution, determination not to fail. Cannot some one replace him in the Ministry? From your number will not some young man come forward? A standard bearer has fallen. Who will catch up the banner of the Cross and carry it to new victories? Who will say, "Lord, here am I, send me"? ΧΙ "ROOMS IN GOD'S PALACE" (Preached in the Cathedral of the Incarnation, September 27th, 1914.) "That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory that ye may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inward man: that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God."-Eph. III:16-19. The most remarkable feature of this passage is its progressive magnificence. We reach a climax of spiritual truth which affects the mind very much as do certain masterpieces of architecture which lead the eye ever to more and more imposing features. These successive clauses admit us to that spiritual palace of the universe, the house of our Father, where we pass from room to room beholding greater and greater splendors. |