out the moment we both of us offer to shake hands on the agreement. Is not that the gesture that is wanted everywhere?

If this spirit of Christian fellowship could only be breathed into all the social and industrial organizations of our modern world! Sometimes the business of a Western mining camp, or of a great city, will be interrupted, streets filled with riot, and some bloodshed; men dropping their work and losing their pay, and wives and children facing want; other men called from their work and their homes to carry arms; all because something has been wrong in the attitude of one set of men to another set of men; and the reason is, that these two sets of men, whose interests are really so vitally related, have so seldom thought of taking each other by the hand, shaking hands over the question, recognizing their fellowship of duty and interest, covenanting with each other in mutual helpfulness.

If I were starting a big business corporation that was to use large amounts of capital and furnish employment to large numbers of men, our text gives me an idea of a good corporate seal. It should be the figure of the president of the corporation and one of the workmen shaking hands, and so drawn that you must look carefully, and then would not feel quite sure which was president and which man;

both of them men, both of them offering help and asking it.

The recent movement in the Presbyterian Church, by which in many places ministers of the Church have been led to seek membership in labor unions, is of the very spirit of Christ. We often speak of our Lord's condescension, saying how far He stooped that He might touch us and help us. Certainly He did stoop far: "He chose us." But do you notice how Christ Himself, when He was on the earth, bore Himself toward men-never as if he wished them to be thinking how far He had stooped to them, and how generous He was to be helping them. He had chosen them; He was their Saviour and Lord; and yet how much of the time He was glad to let them help Him. He asked Peter to lend Him a boat; He asked a Samaritan woman to give Him a drink of water; He accepted the hospitality of publican and of Pharisee indiscriminately; He let the women of Galilee minister to Him on His journeys; He asked a friend in Jerusalem to lend Him a room in his house; He asked His disciples to watch by Him while He prayed; He would help them, and He asked them to help Him. The Son of God was always holding out His hand to men for this friendly grasp of mutual helpful

ness.

He still does it; He still invites our co-operation

in the work He has undertaken. Whatever service we can render His brethren, He accepts it as rendered to Him. Even while He offers to acknowledge us, He is asking us to acknowledge Him. In all our relations to the Lord there is a kind of mutual friendliness, a broad human brotherhood; that is the wonder of this Christian religion. For He is really a King, and we were bowing low before Him; but He is not willing to stand off on His dignity; He is always lifting us up to His side, taking us by the right hand. He who did the choosing has chosen us to be His friends. And this same persistent friendliness toward others must be one of the fruits of our election.

CHAPTER VI

QUIETNESS

WE are treating the subject of Christian ethics under the aspect of Divine election. Each duty of God's servant is dignified for us by the thought that God had particularly selected and appointed that particular man for the doing of that particular thing. The man's life is a plan of God. This being true, it might be natural to infer that duties so dignified by God's notice must be of an imposing character; that God's elect servant, therefore, must spend his days hurrying to and fro, seeking for some great thing to do, something that should seem worthy the Almighty's attention.

There could not be a more disastrous mistake; and to guard against it, let me bring forward the earlier part of the life of Jesus, who was the chosen of God. We learn about that earlier part of his life from two texts in the Gospel of Luke:—Luke ii, 42: "And when He was twelve years old; Luke iii, 23: "And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age."

"Twelve "" thirty "--between those two numbers come eighteen years of the life of Jesus, and

of those eighteen years we have no record; it is a period of silence.

The first thought about it that I would set before you is this, that the only perfect man, the wellbeloved Son of God, could live among men for eighteen years without saying a word, or doing a thing, so far as we know, that should strike the attention of His neighbors, or cause His name to be known beyond the little hamlet in which He lived.

And the second thought that I would set before you is, that he himself never complained over this long-continued obscurity.

We have been taught that the mark of the prize of our high calling toward which we must ever press forward is likeness to Jesus Christ. The secret of Christian ethics is that we should walk in His steps, and take His life for our example; but a very large part of that example must come from these silent years before His baptism, when His higher mission had not yet appeared, and His neighbors knew Him simply as a son in the home, or a workman in the shop. We are apt to overlook those years altogether because they were so silent, but they are the larger part of His life, and the patient silence is just the example that they set before us.

Twelve years old, fifteen years old, twenty years old, twenty-five years old, twenty-six, twenty-sev