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remember the glory of the future is the result of your struggle to-day. Struggle on, then, the morning is breaking, the day is at hand when " the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended ! "
IF There is a certain picture in the National Gallery which, Euskin says, reveals the first sign and token of the Eenais- sance. The painter has partially shaken himself free from the cold, stiff, imitative traditionalisms of mediaeval art ; he has partially broken the bands of the mere copyist, he has gone out to Nature, has been for himself, and has brought back a bird ! That bird, set there in the midst of much that is still ceremonial and traditional, Euskin declares to be one of the first signs of the renaissance of art ! Yes, but the coming of that bird was subsequent to the coming of a new atmosphere ! The renaissance of art succeeded to the renaissance of religion ! The bird was significant of a more intimate touch with reality, but this intimate touch with reality was the issue of a more intimate communion with God. The sensitive perception of the beautiful was the fruit of the re-discovery of the beauty of the Lord. The cheery light and the genial heat of the Eenaissance are to be explained by "the Sun of Eighteousness," upon whose glory men's eyes were gazing again in ravishing and exultant delight. The people had obtained a new vision of the light and glory of God, and they rose into a sweeter and more wholesome life.^
1 J. H. Jowett.
J
The Lord's Sermon.
Literature.
Banks (L. A.), 2Tie King's Stewards, 16.
Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons, 39.
Byles (J.), The Boy and the Angel, 190.
Challacombe (W. A.), The Soul's Wardrobe, 48.
Harper (F.), A Year with Christ, 195.
Henson (H. H.), Westminster Sermons, 280.
Jowett (B.), SermoTis on Faith and Doctrine, 282.
Kingsley (C), National Sermons, 17.
Knight (G. H.) Divine Upliftings, 2.
Lewis (A.), Sermons Preached in England, 206.
Manning (H. E.), Sermons, ii. 200.
Manning (H. E.), Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, ii. 383.
Matheson (G.), Voices of the Spirit, 73.
Selby (T. G.), Holy Spirit and Glmstian Privilege, 25.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvii. No. 1604 ;
xl. No. 2371 ; liv. No. 3104. Vaughan (C. J.), Family Prayer and Sermon Book, ii. 209, 247. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), viii. No. 729 ff. Christian World Pulpit, v. 70, 94, 102 (Barfield) ; Ixxv. 209 (Henson). Church of England Pulpit, Ixi, 234 (Cecil). Expository Times, ix. 492. Preacher's Magazine, ii. 170 (Harper) ; xii. 540 (Burbridge).
The LORD'S Sermon.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.— Ixi. i.
As we speak of the " The Lord's Prayer " we may call this " The Lord's Sermon." He adopted it as His own (Luke iv. 16—22) as He did not the Lord's Prayer. It is the model of all sermons. It contains all that a sermon need or can contain — (1) The Audience, (2) the Message, (3) the Preacher.
The Audience.
There are four classes.
1. The meek, or " the poor." — It is the same word that is applied to Moses in Num. xii. 3, and it means the opposite of self-seeking. In Luke iv. 18 it is given as " the poor," the same word being used as Jesus uses when He says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit " (Matt. v. 3). " Blessed be ye poor " (Luke vi. 20). Perhaps its meaning is best expressed by the phrase, " poor and needy." The " poor " may not be blessed as such, and the rich may ; but the poor are more likely to be blessed because more likely to feel their need. It is a gospel to them that need and know it. It is for all the young, all the helpless, all but the self-sufficient.
The Hebrew word has just a shade of ambiguity between " poor " simply and " poor in spirit," and we can easily imagine it susceptible of both renderings. It is a word, too, which comes into one of those central passages of the Old Testament
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which our Lord took up most directly as His own teaching. It will be observed that, in the Kevised Version of Isa. Ixi. 1, the old rendering is retained : " The spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meeh " : but " poor " is given in the margin as an alternative for " meek " ; and in the quotation of this passage in St. Luke iv. 1 8, " poor " is the rendering both in the Greek and in the English. In Ps. ix. 18, "The expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever," the Eevised Version has " poor " in the text, " meek " in the margin. There can be little doubt that the Hebrew (or Aramaic) corresponding to this was the word originally used in the first beatitude, and that the evangelist has represented it to us by an apt and just para- phrase.^