watching and studying their variety, both of color, size, shape and beauty and even ugliness, there would come the thought that to the Omniscient One all these things have a distinct purpose, and that to him there is no problem of origin of species and variations. To the astronomer looking upon the stars, millions upon millions, innumerable by numbers that have a name, there would come the conclusion that under the allseeing eye of Him who is without variableness or shadow cast by turning these planets and stars and suns and universes at each and every moment represent a distinct thought of God, even as the pages of the Bible tell of Elijah and Elisha. To the lawyer, the all-seeing eye of God would suggest, what is the hope and yet the unattainable aim of man, a perfect jury and a perfect judge. To some railroad engineer, these five words would suggest that each man was like a train, with records kept at some gigantic headquarters, some infinite train-despatcher's office. There all is put down in black and white, there the man of industry is like the train always on time, the young man, ruining his life with drink, like the train wrecked and off the track, while the man with great gifts, which he has neglected, is like a train, snowbound, overcome and useless in the drifts of indolence and moral weakness.

But in this analogy of the train, let us remember that the engineer is not only under the eye of the train-despatcher, but that at any moment he

may receive warning of dangers, with orders to obey. So it is with us, and this leads us to the last part of this definition of religion, given by Harnack, "Religion is to live in time for eternity, under the eye and with the help of God."

the stake, but God not only

For this is the greatest possible conviction that can ever come to any human being - that he is living with the help of God. God not only sees the martyr Ridley, burning at can help him bear those flames. saw the Jesuit missionary being tortured by the North American Indians, but could cause him to rejoice in his tortures for the glory of God. And God alone can sustain a poor and lonely mother left with her children to support. God is something more than an all-seeing eye to the moral reformers, wearing out body and soul, in almost hopeless struggle with the wrong, but with the conviction and a zeal that their fellow-persecutors might well envy.

This conviction that we are to live with the help of God, is the crowning glory of religion, and leads us to answer the last question, how may God help us?

I believe that God may help us in different ways. He may help us when He speaks through the voice of conscience, as when the mother of Theodore Parker said to him" Some men call it conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer and al

ways guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on your heeding this little voice."

God may help us when we insist upon speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter what may happen, as in the case of the Persian

"Ottaya from his earliest youth,
Was consecrated to the truth,
And if the universe must die,
Unless Ottaya told a lie,

He would defy the fate's last crash

And let all sink to one pale ash,

Or ever from his truthful tongue

One word of falsehood should be wrung."

God helps us when we persist in obeying those deepseated feelings of innate goodness, and when we demand that what is imperfect in us must not be held to be perfect in Him. As the poet Whittier said:

"Not mine to look where cherubim,
And seraphs may not see,
But nothing can be good in Him
Which evil is in me.

The wrong that pains my soul below
I dare not throne above,

I know not of His hate I know

His goodness and His love."

God helps us when we read inspiring passages in great books, like the gem of Saint Paul's writings, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians -"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.”

The beauty and essence of this help from God is that it may be direct. The traveler shipwrecked upon a lonely island, or the reformer in the Russian cell, can receive that help as quickly as a worshiper in some Gothic cathedral. The repentant woman, cast out by the world, alone and deserted, may receive that help as soon as her happier sister in the gay Easter service, and may even say, like Hagar of old, "Because the Lord hath heard my affliction."

We need no priest nor minister, though they be saintly men, for each one of us may be his own priest, and at any moment, inside or outside of the church, may say in all sincerity that simplest prayer of all simple prayers, the shortest and yet the most acceptable," God be merciful to me, a sinner." There is no need of an elaborate ritual, for it may be that we shall be alone and in a strange land, when, like the Prodigal Son, we come to ourselves.

And in answering this last question of all questions, How God helps us, let us cast away all sectarian narrowness, all personal prejudice, and all denominational illusion, and see that God helps each one in a different way. As has been well said,

no one church has a monopoly of the holy spirit. The saying of a beautiful and hallowed ritual may have an irresistible uplift for him who has been brought up within its traditions, while the jangling tune of a Salvation Army song may lead some tramp to seek light, who would be entirely unaffected by the most beautiful ritual that man may compose. And the words of the first hymn we learned in our innocent childhood days at our mother's knee may yet awaken in us the expulsive power of a new affection.

I believe in conclusion that the highest way in which God helps us is when He speaks to us through some personality. When we look at the self-sacrificing love of the one who bore us, or remember the upright life of him whose name we bear, or think of some noble friend who has helped us, or think of how our life is sweetened by the daily companionship of some unselfish loving consort, or think of some elder brother, like the Man of Galilee, then do we receive the greatest help from God, and understand best what it means to live with Him. And then, remembering how we have received so great a gift from those who have gone before, our respect to them, and our thankfulness to God, demand that we transmit this gift of all gifts to others, not only untarnished, but made more inspiring to those yet to come.