been lavished upon human affection ; the toil of the intellect has been for man first, for God second; the occupation of the thoughts has been found in schemes for the happiness of the earthly idol,-not in meditation how best to promote the glory of God; and still there has been no visible evil, no wilful sin, no apparent neglect of duty; only the heart is cold in religion, for God has but the secondary place.

Yet the Redeemer is more merciful than man. He sees the good where we should see only the evil; He accepts the half when we would acknowledge nothing but the whole; and at length, in His long-suffering kindness, He removes the veil from the heart; and in the day of His chastisement,when our idol is broken by disappointment or removed by death, the secret of the long inconsistency is revealed.

A mournful revelation must that be. If we would save ourselves from its self-reproach and regret, we must open our eyes to the danger before the hour of temptation shall arrive. God must be loved in youth; and to love Him we must know Him, and to know Him we must think of Him, not according to our own low, miserable, human fancies, but according to His revelation of Himself in the Gospel.

The look which was turned upon St. Peter,that loving, longing, pitying glance,-is resting now upon us. The forgiveness which waited for him with the tender reproach, "Simon, son of Jonas,

lovest thou Me ?" which even sympathised with the weakness of affection, and added, "Lovest thou Me more than these ?"—that forgiveness is still waiting to be bestowed upon us. The human trials, the human needs, oneness with which bound the heart of the apostle to his Lord, are still present to Christ. Because He is God He has not ceased to be man. Our wants, our pleasures, our hopes, our disappointments are as known to Him now, as were the sufferings and joys of St. Peter when he floated with Him on the waters of Gennesareth, or sat with Him on the green hills of Olivet. If we would love Him, we must go to Him with them. Not only our repentence, and our struggles, must be made known to Him; but our cares, our wishes, our regrets. Then will He become the centre of our thoughts, and if of our thoughts, the centre also of our affections.

Once first in our hearts,-once truly the Lord of our whole being,-and human love will be what He intended it should be: it will brighten and hallow earth, but will never rob us of Heaven.

THE EVIDENCE OF TRUTH.

ST. LUKE, Xxii. 63-65.

"And the men that held Jesus mocked Him, and smote Him. And when they had blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face and asked Him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote Thee? And many other things blasphemously spake they against Him."

ON first reading the account of St. Luke, it does not seem clear whether the personal insults to our Lord were shown when St. Peter was present; but the other Gospels prove that they were. The sight of them must have greatly increased the Apostle's fears. And so also, we may imagine, that it added greatly to the Redeemer's sufferings to see one of His own Disciples at such a moment, afraid to offer even one glance of sympathy, and thinking of His personal comfort, when his Master was suffering the very extremity of provocation. For Christ stood helpless-whilst the fact of His Divinity was derided, and its assertion was turned into a cause of mockery.

Our Lord's feelings are always represented as essentially human; and, perhaps, there is nothing more intensely galling to a noble, human mind, than to be a witness to the assertion of an untruth

under any form. The love of truth is evidently a relic of the first sinless creation. It lies at the root of all goodness, and probably of all beauty. Truth is in fact harmony,-the perfect agreement of our opinions and our actions with some external standard. True doctrines are those which agree with the facts of the Divine Nature revealed to us in the Bible. True moral principles are those which are in unison with the Law of God given us by revelation, and written upon our hearts. Truth in word is the accordance of our words with the external circumstances or the internal feelings which they represent. It may be that beauty is but another form of truth, consisting in the agreement of the object represented with certain original laws of harmony and proportion existing in the Divine Mind.

And if truth be thus in its nature divine, how deep must have been the love of it in Him who first taught us to be conscious of it! When our Blessed Redeemer was blindfolded, and told to prophesy, the denial of His Divinity was involved in the fearful mockery, and it was this which formed its sting. And even the actual personal insult of the blow could not, we may believe, have been more bitter than the feeling of indignation which would be the natural result of the derisive doubt of His Omniscience.

For the power of the Divinity was then, as ever, present to Him. Even as He stood before

them a helpless captive

He was reading their

hearts. He was watching and scrutinizing the confused, maddening turmoil of thoughts in those who crowded around Him, even whilst they were taunting Him with the power which He could but would not exercise.

To a human being, like one of the prophets of old, the temptation would have been to comply with their mocking command, even for the very sake of truth. For we all know, if not by experience at least by intuition, what the trial is to have a doubt thrown upon our word,-to be aware that those who scorn us are deceived, and that we hold in our hands the means of confuting them,— and yet to be withheld from using those means. It is a temptation which few can bear, even in its lightest form. The common excuse given, if strength fails, is that it was impossible to endure it longer, that we were forced to speak; and the aggravation of our situation is received as a sufficient apology.

We forget that "Jesus was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth."

And there must have been another circumstance in the trial adding to its severity. It must have been,―as "He who searcheth the heart" well knew, -a stumbling-block in the way of the affectionate but timid Apostle. St. Peter had much to learn from the teaching of the Holy Spirit before he could comprehend the passive submission shown by His Master because "His hour was come. Doubtless