THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH.

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who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Those who hold this primal truth, though they may differ widely, cannot widely err. The pursuit of truth should be the labour and happiness of our lives, and then, like good scribes, we shall be enabled to bring out of our treasures things new and old: things old, for those ancient, those blessed, those time-worn truths of the Gospel of Christ are ever the same, and can suffer no real diminution nor addition; things new, because we shall learn to understand them deeper and better than ever we did, because our sympathies will grow larger, our hearts more loving, our understandings more matured, our spirits more exercised in divine matters. We shall learn best when we study diligently, earnestly, prayerfully; a divine radiance seems to dwell upon the brow bent low in worship. Here we only see in part and know in part; and here we must take to heart the humbling conviction that our seeing and our knowing are both most narrow, limited, and partial. But we are sure that the ocean of illumination will be attained hereafter. The pursuit of divine truth, even in that hereafter, will continue to be the worthiest employment of the immortal spirit, for ever proceeding from glory to glory, and from knowledge to knowledge.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST.

'It is reported in the Bohemian story, that St. Wenceslaus, their king, one winter night going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted, in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice, his servant Redevivus, who waited upon his master's piety, and endeavoured to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him. The servant did so, and either fancied a cure or found one; for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow. In the same manner does the blessed Jesus; for since our way is troublesome, obscure, full of objection and danger, apt to be mistaken and to affright our industry, He commands us to mark His footsteps, to tread where His feet have stood; and not only invites us forward by the argument of His example, but He hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the way easier, and fit for our feet.'

UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM IS IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 147

The apologue and the application are Jeremy Taylor's. It brings before us that great subject of the Imitation of Christ, which in every phase of the Christian faith, and in every era of the Christian Church, has been so dear to the hearts and thoughts of the faithful. This is indeed the express and universal bond which links together those who are separated by the widest external diversities. Think of the lonely monk in his cell, in ages widely different from the light and knowledge of our own, dwelling evermore on the ideal of that perfect life, and seeking to reproduce, however faintly, its blessed lineaments. Under some such circumstances that wonderful work, attributed to À Kempis, was produced, which has exercised so wide and so beneficent an influence upon Christendom. Keeping close to the Saviour constitutes the real unity of Christendom; and those who do this, though they may differ, are strongly knit together. What we see in the world of mind, may supply us with a lesson and an illustration. Imitation is the parent of excellence. A man is known by the companionship which he finds. He who lives with the noble of the living, and, what is still more important, with the noble of the dead, learns to breathe their upper air, to think such thoughts, and to speak such language. He is made free of the great company of poets, orators, and philosophers. If he can only regard their achievements with admiring despair, he enjoys the happiness of truthful appreciation, and their

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OUR LORD'S LIFE OF EXAMPLE.

intellectual fellowship. So, too, in art. To become å great painter, a familiarity with great painters is requisite. For this purpose, man travels far and wide to contemplate and study the works of the great masters. Chief of all, the artist studies the facts themselves of nature and art; will himself watch the sun sink beneath desert sands or the level of the ocean; will haunt the broken arches of deserted temples, or explore the loneliness of rocks, caves, and mountains. Now in all this there may be a lesson for ourselves, and that lesson is the imitation of Christ. The practical side of religion is, that we should be followers of Him as dear children. If we would grow in the divine life ourselves, we must study that blessed life in all the details which, in the providence of God, have come down to us.

The mission of the Saviour in the world was certainly not this alone, that He might die for us. If that were all, the years of His human life would scarcely be fully accounted for. It might be asked why it was necessary that the Son of God should for those many years have lived upon this fallen earth, if only to appear in the world and to suffer would have sufficed? But not only did He die to make atonement for our sins, but He also lived to work out a perfect righteousness of obedience to the divine law, which is imputed to believers, and becomes their title to life. He lived also that by His Spirit He might create anew in man the image of God, that he might raise us from