trivialities, into that great stream, and it will magnify and glorify the smallest and the homeliest. Absolute submission to the Divine will, and the ever-present thrilling consciousness of doing it, were the secret of Christ's life, and ought to be the secret of ours.

Note the distinction between doing the will and perfecting the work. That implies that Jesus Christ, like us, reached forward, in each successive act of obedience to the successive manifestations of the Father's will, to something still undone. The work will never be perfected or finished except on condition of continual fulfilment, moment by moment, of the separate behests of that Divine will. For the Lord, as for His servants, this was the manner of obedience, that He "pressed towards the mark," and by individual acts of conformity secured that at the last the whole "work" should have been so completely accomplished that He might be able to say upon the Cross, “It is finished." Thus, if we have any right to call ourselves His, we, too, have to live.

III.-Lastly, notice the reinvigorated Christ.

I have already pointed out the lovely contrast between the two pictures, the beginning and the end of this incident; so I need not dwell upon that. The disciples wondered when they found that Christ desired and needed none of the homely sustenance that they had brought to Him. And when He answered their sympathy rather than their curiosity -for they did not ask Him any questions, but they said to Him, "Master, eat"-with "I have meat to eat that ye know not of," they, in their blind, blundering fashion, could only imagine that somebody had brought Him something. So they gave occasion

for the great words upon which we have been touching.

Notice, however, that Christ here sets forth the lofty aim at conformity to the Divine will, and fulfilment of the Divine work, as being the meat of the soul. It is the true nourishment for us all. The spirit which feeds upon such food will grow and be nourished. And the soul which feeds upon its own will and fancies, and not upon the plain brown bread of obedience, which is wholesome, though it be often. bitter, will feed upon ashes, which will grate upon the teeth and hurt the palate. Such a soul will be like those wretched infants that you find sometimes at "baby-farms," as people call them, starved and stunted, and not grown to half their right size. If you would have your spirits strong, robust, wellnourished-live by obedience, and let the will of God be the food of your souls, and all will be well.

Souls thus fed can do without a great deal that others need. Why, enthusiasm for anything lifts a man above physical necessities and lower desires, even in its poorest forms. A regiment of soldiers making a forced march, or athlete's trying to break the record, will tramp, tramp on, not needing food, or rest, or sleep, until they have achieved their purpose, poor and ignoble though it may be. In all regions of life, enthusiasm and lofty aiins make the soul lord of the body and of the world.

And in the Christian life we shall be thus lords, exactly in proportion to the depth and earnestness of our desires to do the will of God. They who thus are fed can afford "to scorn delights and live laborious days." They who thus are fed can afford to do with

plain living, if there be high impulses as well as high thinking. And sure I am that nothing is more certain to stamp out the enthusiasm of obedience, which ought to mark the Christian life, than the luxurious fashion of living which is getting so common to-day amongst professing Christians.

It is not in vain that we have the old story about the children whose faces were radiant and whose flesh was firmer, when they were fed on pulse and water than were theirs who feasted on the wine and dainties

of the Babylonish court. "Set a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite." And let us remember that the less we use, and the less we feel that we need, of outward goods, the nearer do we approach to the condition in which holy desires and lofty aims will visit our spirits.

I commend to you, brethren, the story of our text, in almost its literal application, as well as in the loftier spiritual lessons that may be drawn from it. To be near Christ, and to desire to live for Him, deliver us from dependence upon earthly things; and in those who thus do live the old word shall be fulfilled," Better is a little that a righteous man hath than the abundance of many wicked."

II.

Christ's Finished and Unfinished Work.

"THE former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up."-ACTS i. 1, 2.

"And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him."-ACTS xxviii. 30, 31.

O begins and so ends this book. I connect the commencement and the close because I think that the juxtaposition throws great light upon the purpose of the writer, and suggests some very important lessons. The reference to "the former treatise" (which is, of course, the Gospel according to Luke) implies that this book is to be regarded as its sequel, and the terms of the reference show the writer's own conception of what he was going to do in his second volume. "The former treatise have I made of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up." Is not the natural inference that the latter treatise will tell us what Jesus continued " to do and teach" after He was taken up? I think so, And thus the writer

sets forth at once, for those that have eyes to see, what he means to do, and what he thinks his book is going to be about.

So, then, the name "the Acts of the Apostles," which is not coeval with the book itself, is somewhat of a misnomer. Most of the apostles are never heard of in it. There are, at the most, only three or four of them concerning whom anything is recorded. And our first text supplies a reason for regarding that title as inadequate, and even misleading. For, if the theme of the story be what Christ did, then the book is not the Acts of the Apostles," but the Acts of Jesus Christ through His servants. He, and He alone, is the Actor; and the men that appear are but the instruments in His hands, He alone being the mover of the pawns on the board.

That conception of the purpose of the "treatise seems to me to be confirmed by, and to explain, the singular abruptness of the conclusion which must strike every reader. No doubt it is quite possible that the reason why the book ends in such a singular fashion, planting Paul in Rome, and leaving him there, may be that the date of its composition was that imprisonment of Paul in the imperial city, in a part of which, at all events, we know that Luke was his companion. But, whilst that consideration may explain the point at which the record stops, it does not explain the way in which it stops. The historian lays down his pen, possibly because he had brought his narrative up to date. But a word of conclusion explaining that it was so would have been very natural, and its absence must have had some reason. It is also possible that the arrival of the Apostle in the imperial city,