Ver. 6.-.A wise ruminder. "If thou put the brethren in remembrance." We cannot create truth, any more than the artist can create nature. Revelation is not imagination. A teacher can combine, harmonize, reproduce, and call to remembrance. Timothy cannot add to the gospel. In the eleventh verse of the first chapter it is called" the glorious gospel, which was committed to my trust." A trustee does not alter the will, neither does he add to it. All that he has to do is sacredly to carry out the laat wishes of the testator. And when Christ had finished the gospel by his ascension, then he sent them into all the world to preach it. I. 1'1rn CHURoe A BROTHERHOOD, " Put the brethren." Here is no priestly domi- nation, no hierarchical pretension. 1. Brotherhood in service. We may have different functions, but we are all servants. We have it in type in the great Servant, " who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." We ought never to be ashamed of service. The old guilds in England were beautiful things. It is a pity now that retirement is thought more honourable than service. 2. Brotherhood i1I sympathy. The most precious element in life is the sentiment of pity. Some men despise sentiment ; but without it. you take away the atmosphere of life, as in nature atmosphere is the drapery of the hills and the haze of the mountains. This sympathy is subtle, not merely spoken, but breathed in tones and glances at us in looks of thoughtful love. It is an angel of help, always swift to help, and ready to fly to sorrow. Shakespeare calls it" Heaven's cherubim horsed." 3. Brotherhood in pilgrimage. In Church life there will be absence of mere etiquette and ceremony. It will be a contrast to the world. It will not be easy to come and go from a true pilgrim Church. Pride may not care for it; fashion, in its novelistic literature, may laugh at it; but the Christian knows that there is something strengthening in the fellowship of the saints. II. THE GOSPEL A REMEMBRANCE. "Put them in remembrance;" because of their preoccupation. Business life, the cares of home, make us forget the heavenly Word. Too often the angels of God stand outside the heart. In a busy age like the present there is nothing men so much need as quiet hours for the quickening of memory. "Remembrance;" because of familiarity. As the Swiss mountaineer thinks little of the beauty which the traveller goes miles upon miles to see, so the gospel has been round about our childhood and youth, and there is a danger lest we make light of that which is so familiar to our thought. "Remembrance;" because of pride. \Ve forget that we need the gospel, and once felt ourself to be chief of sinners; forget that we were slaves, and can now go back and take up the broken chains of old sins. " Remembrance; " because we may seek to make a new religion for ourselves. Earnestness may take the forms of Pharisaism and asceticism; we may try Emersonian self-dependence. We are to remember that the gospel of the grace of God is what we all need unto the end.-W. M. S. Ver. &.-Ministerial, oocation. "Thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained." Taking your own medicines. Eating the bread you recommend. A good korti- culturist will show you his own garden. The test, therefore, of Christian faith and good doctrine is-being nourished up. I. IT ),[AKES MEN STRONG TO l!:NDUBE. Ministers are men of like passion11 with others; u Shakespeare says- " We are all men I In our own nature, frail, incapable. Of our flesh, few are angels." Paul realized all this himself, and said, " We are men of like pOBSions with yourselveB." In the daily conflict, the soul that is nourished up and made strong in Christ can " endure as seeing him who is invisible." II. MADE STRONG TO EN.JOY. Full of deep and quiet joy. It is a poor strength that can merely show self-denial I There must be self-exercise--the ability to show that lift in God leads to a ministry of service that shall be full of heart and hope. L TlllOTHY. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. [OH, IV, 1-18.
ill. MAnE RTHONG TO TESTIFY. "Nomished up in the worde of faith" eo RB not merely to expound them or to give elitborRte exegesis of doctrine, but to iivo out tho heavenly truths. Timothy was to att,-iin ,,nto this, itnd to let no man despise his youth, beoallll8 age alone is not wisdom, and Paul speaks of him as hitving "attained."-W. M. B.