2 COR. III. i8 loi
a picture of Himself, and turn the soul like wax or clay to the seal of His own light and love. He that made our souls in His own image and likeness can easily find a way into them. The Word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints itself there as with the point of a diamond." " God alone " ; yes, God in His personal action upon our very selves, God in Christ dwelling " in the heart by faith," God by His Spirit strengthening us " with might in the inner man."
^ William Denny was not a heretic, but neither was he orthodox. He attached little importance to dogma, and was accustomed to judge all things by moral tests. The spirit of Christ, not His metaphysical relation to Deity, was what he valued. The spirit of self-sacrifice was what he saw in the Cross, Christ teaching us to bear others' burdens. That spirit he believed to be Divine, and endeavoured to put in practice. Tested by the measure in which he made that spirit the law of his life, he was, I make bold to aver, one of the most Christlike men of this age.^
Too long have I, methought, with tearful eye, Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused Above each stitch awry, and thread confused ; Now will I think on what in years gone by I heard of them that weave rare tapestry At royal looms, and how they constant use To work on the rough side, and still peruse The picture pattern set above them high : So will I set my copy high above. And gaze, and gaze till on my spirit flows Its gracious impress, till some line of love Transferred upon my canvas, faintly flows ; Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide He whom I work for sees their fairer side ! *
* A. B. Bruce, The Life of William Denny, 478.
• Dora Greenwell.
An Eternal Weight of Glory.
Literature.
Caird (J.), University Sermons, 360.
Church (R. W.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 294.
Dix (M.), Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, 65.
Finney (C. G.), The Way of Salvation, 447.
Henson (H. H.), The Creed in the Pulpit, 179.
Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount, 62.
Maurice (F. D.), Sermons Preached in Country Chv/rches, 250.
Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 105.
Mortimer (A. G.), Studies in Holy Scripture, 258.
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Roberts (W. P.), Reasonable Service, 66.
Shedd (W. G. T.), Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 69.
Stevenson (J. F.), God and a Future Life, 16. ,
Thorn (J. H.), Laivs of Life after the Mind of Christ, 393.
Vince (C), The Unchanging Saviour, 278.
"Walker (E. M.), Signs of the Times, 40.
Watson (J.), The Inspiration of Our Faith, 348.
Welldon (J. E. C), The Spiritual Life, 45.
Christian Age, xliv. 322 (J. Galbraith) ; xlvi. 404 (C. H. Parkhurst).
Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 331 ; xix. 204 ; xxiii. 266 (H. W. Beecher) ;
xiviii. 115 (W. G. Border). Expositor OAid Current Anecdotes (Cleveland), xiv. (1913) 665 (C. C.
Albertson). Homiletic Review, New Ser., xix. 322 (W. R. Davis).
An Eternal Weight of Glory.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. — 2 Cor. iv. 17.
George Herbert, in his Country Parson, describes this Epistle as " full of affections." Beyond any other of the Apostle's letters it lays bare the deepest feelings of that great heart, which has been keenly wounded by sufferings more acute than the trouble that came upon him in Asia and pressed him out of measure, beyond his strength, so that he had despaired even of life. Life is still his : but he has been made to feel, as he had not felt before, the pain which can be inflicted by coldness, suspiciousness, and some- thing like hostility on the part of those towards whom, as he says, with touching emphasis, his heart has been habitually " enlarged." They have listened to malignant misconstructions, set afloat by those Judaizing teachers who made it their business to stamp out his work wherever Jewish Christians were to be found. It was bitter indeed for him who during a year and a half had been the guest of Justus, who had baptized Crispus and Gains, and the household of Stephanas, to have to defend himself against the imputation of double-mindedness, of shifty diplomacy, and of what in modern phrase might be called priestcraft. It might well make him write warmly, and also mournfully. Much, he felt, was against him ; he was hard put to it, " perplexed, cast down " ; it was as if a " process of dying " had begun in him ; his bodily health, continually impaired by the " thorn in the flesh," had been yet further affected by the mental distress of an intensely sensitive nature. But faith comes to his aid ; " though the outward man be decaying, the inward man is daily renewing its strength " ; the " momentary affliction seems light " after all, when he considers that it is producing, in a manner and to an extent surpassing all thought, " an eternal weight of glory " ; and this comes home to him when he seriously contrasts " the things seen," as " temporal," with