Far as the man is in possibilities above the beast, there are times when man seems to be the less noble creature, and the beast, rather than the man, seems to be gazing in his poor, dumb way, upon the vision of the Almighty.

It is a scene that has its counterpart in modern life-a noble horse driven by a drunken, and cruel, and blaspheming driver. There is a dignity in the beast that is unaffected by the maudlin, imperious whims of his besotted master, and beneath the blows of the lash a patient look in the eyes that suggests the whole creation groaning and travailing together in pain, waiting for the manifestation of the Sons of God.

Oh, Sons of God, when shall we open our eyes to see the angel of the Lord, standing in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand!

It was no ordinary angel that confronted Balaam. He speaks of Himself as God. "Thy way is perverse before Me." "Only the word that I speak unto thee, that shalt thou speak." It was an angel who was not merely a minister of God, but God Himself. It was one of those instances which the Fathers describe as a manifestation of the

Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, ages before the Incarnation. He who stood before Balaam in the way was the Son of God, He who in the fulness of time became incarnate, was born of woman, and walked the fields of Galilee, and said, to the amazement of the world, "Before Abraham was, I am."

Balaam, so to speak, met Christ on his way. And it was that vision of Christ that sent him on to Moab, no longer a seeker of bribes and honors, but a man with the courage to speak the unwelcome truth in strains of glorious prophecy, though it cost him all his promised rewards, and sent him home again empty-handed and alone.

It is just now, in the summer time, a season of relaxed energy. But within a few weeks all the world will take up its tasks again, and gird itself for another year of toil. For these tasks you need intelligence, and energy, and courage. But above all things you need conscience. The subtleties of temptation that seem to be peculiar to this age require that a man's life from day to day be judged in the forum of his own conscience. But it must be a conscience kept quick and sensitive by being implicitly obeyed. It must be a con

science kept true by constant refreshment with the life and spirit of Jesus Christ.

Do not regard your conscience as a hindrance that keeps you back from unlawful joy and gain, but rather as God's precious gift to keep you in the way of truth and eternal life. Do not argue with your conscience to force from it a sanction of your desires, for so you will deaden it, and destroy its power.

One can hardly converse with a modern business man without being amazed at the moral perplexities that confront the worker in modern life. But it seems too often to be assumed that where one's gain and prosperity are involved, and where dishonest competition dictates the use of dishonest methods in self-defense, that even a Christian must not be expected to maintain the absolute standard and ideal of right for which a follower of Jesus Christ ought to stand.

To translate practical Christianity into terms of modern life requires that you be supported by a power greater than your own. The world is skeptical of sacramental grace. And we all should be skeptical if we were to see men crowding into Church to receive strength from a Sacrament without a thought

beforehand, or a reflection afterward. Sacramental grace is mysterious, but it is not magical.

Let a man approach the Altar, week by week, with the preparation which his Prayer Book describes, after a searching examination of his life, acknowledging all his sins and all his failures, with true repentence. Then will religion take a real grip upon his actual life, and Christ shall send him forth to his daily task with conscience pure and resolution high.

XVIII.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF HELL?

If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.-S. MATTHEW v, 30.

A FEW years ago, in one of the magazines, appeared an article entitled, "What has become of Hell?" It is a timely question. We do not expect to hear Hell so much as mentioned in the modern pulpit. A stranger, entering a church today, and perceiving that Hell is to be the subject of the sermon, decides off-hand that the preacher is behind the times.

If you can transport yourself, in imagination, to the meeting-house of Jonathan Edwards, in the days of your great grandfather, you will see a congregation cringing in terror under the lash of flaming words from the lips of the most dreadful of all preachers of hell fire. You will hear his famous sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." You will hear him cry, "The God that holds