March 20

Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die; for I have not found thy work perfect before God.

RELIGION has rejoiced in the clear knowledge of God, and forgotten the fellowship of man. And the punishment has been, not the overthrow of its outward prosperity, but the slow withdrawal of that revelation of which it seemed to possess so secure a certainty. So that now we walk for the most part blindly, in the twilight, with no clear vision of a spiritual world and an unseen Father. It may be that the way back to the unclouded height will be found through the humble and deliberate search after that fellowship which has been offended and denied. . . Teaching so familiar as to become meaningless may assume a new significance. The feast to which first are to be called the friendless and the poor: the "Inasmuch" with its triumph and its mysterious warning; the strange and solitary revelation of future judgment for a rich man who lived happily with want and misery lying unnoticed at his doors; the woes pronounced on the complacent orthodox religious, so entirely convinced that they are fulfilling every jot and tittle of the law; these have a meaning for Christianity in England at the dawn of the twentieth century. Assuredly it is as well that the old gospel should be given a trial before we proclaim the necessity for a new.

C. F. G. MASTER- MAN

THE HOUSE ON THE SAND