essential to permanence, reinforcing human power, controlling and unifying the manifold activities of our lives, with the vast patience of Infinite love and hope. Not until the scaffolding of the body falls away shall we see how strong and beautiful Christ can make a life surrendered to Him. "Therefore to Whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable name? Builder and Maker Thou, of houses not made with hands!" The Divine Maker seeks material out of which He can create this house eternal in the heavens. "We are his workmanship," declared the apostle, using a word which suggests that Christian character stands related to God, as a poem to its author. A Cathedral has sometimes appeared to us as a poem in stone; but earth's sublimest poetry is a human life through which God utters the eternal music of righteousness and love. Our poetry is but dull prose compared with this. At the close of his essay on "Principles Mark Rutherford writes down his confession: "I only speak my own experience; I am not talking theology or philosophy. I know what I am say ing, and can point out the times and places when I should have fallen if I had been able to rely for guidance upon nothing better than a commandment or deduction. But the pure, calm, heroic figure of Jesus confronted me, and I succeeded. I had no doubt as to what He would have done, and through Him I did not doubt what I ought to do." That experience is confirmed by multitudes. It has been stated in many ways but it is always essentially the same. Our life is so constituted that it needs more than principles for its completion. It has no more indubitable sign of its high kinship than this; it needs Another to be itself. Independence is failure. As surely as the farmer does most when he gives Nature an opportunity to produce his wheat, so do we build most securely when we allow the Divine Maker of all strength and beauty to lay His Almighty yet most tender hands upon the powers which make our lives. Human dignity is found in the greatness of its need: "When I am weak then am I strong." Who could speak thus save a son of God? TENNYSON: "IN MEMORIAM" A POET'S PLEA FOR FAITH "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will look forth to see what He will speak with me, and what I shall answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold the just shall live by his faith." THE HABAKKUK II. 1-4. HE WORDS from this ancient prophecy describe very vividly the mission which God. gave to Alfred Tennyson in the nineteenth century. Standing upon his watch-tower in an age charged with perplexities and questionings, seeing with open eyes the misgivings, the anxieties, the despair of his generation, he, like that ancient prophet, proclaimed deliverance by faith. It is the custom in Edinburgh for four buglers to blow out the "Last Post" each evening from the Castle. There was a legend, that lingered late |