with which the Holy Spirit is now given, thus characterizing the gospel times as the dispensation of the Spirit. Formerly the gift was like the dew, now it is like the rain; formerly like the early dawning light, nor like the full splendor and power of the day; formerly like the first early fruits, now like an abundant harvest.

William Arthur, in his "Tongue of Fire," compares these different degrees to water, which, when cold, is solid, brittle ice: "gently warmed, it flows; further heated, it mounts to the sky"; and he might have added that, with still greater heat, it becomes steam,— one of the greatest working forces known.

Air in
Organ.

So," an organ filled with the ordinary degree of air which exists everywhere is dumb. Throw in, not another air, but an unsteady current of the same air, and sweet but imperfect and uncertain notes immediately respond to the player's touch; increase the current to a full supply, and every pipe swells with music."

Another illustration is found in oxygen, which in air is free and life-giving; in the form of ozone, has power to bring Oxygen. rapid decay in the autumn leaves, and in the form of fire has its mightiest effects in light and heat, unknown to other forms.

"We are but organs mute, till a master touches the keys-

Verily, vessels of earth into which God poureth the wine; Harps are we, silent harps that have hung in the willow-trees, Dumb till our heartstrings swell and break with a pulse divine."

MR. MOODY'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES.- 'I can myself go back almost twelve years and remember two holy women who used to come to my meetings. It was delightful to see them there. When I began to preach I could tell by the expression of their faces that they were praying for me. At the close of the Sabbath evening meetings they would say to me, 'We have been praying for you.' I said, 'Why don't you pray for the people?' They answered, 'You need the power. I need power?' I said to myself, Why, I thought I had power.' I had a large Sabbath-school and the largest congregation in Chicago. There were some conversions at the time. I was, in a sense, satisfied. But, right along these two godly women

A.D. 26. WORK OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

JESUS AT NAZARETH.

kept praying for me, and their earnest talk about 'anointing for special service' set me thinking. I asked them to come and talk with me, and we got down on our knees. They poured out their hearts that I might receive an anointing from the Holy Spirit, and there came a great hunger into my soul. I did not know what it was. I began to cry as I never did before. The hunger increased. I was crying all the time that God would fill me with his Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York-oh, what a day! I cannot describe it; I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say God then revealed himself to me, and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths; and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you would give me all Glasgow,-it would be as the small dust of the balance."

-Dwight L. Moody, in address at Glasgow.

ROOMS TO LET WITH POWER.-Mrs. Pearsall Smith not long ago said, in an address, that she often saw in Philadelphia the sign, Rooms To Let with Power." Such God offers us. All the places in which we are to work, all our duties, God gives us with power to make them effective, but we must accept and use the power that is given us.

Fire as a

Symbol.

AND WITH FIRE.-There is no better visible symbol of the Holy Spirit than fire. Fire, shining in light, is mysterious in nature, ineffably bright and glorious, everywhere present, swift-winged, undefiled, and undefilable. Light is the source of life, of beauty, of manifested reality, of warmth, comfort, and joy, of health, and of power, It destroys all darkness. Without it the world would be but a mass of coldness and death. Fire purifies, fire subdues with resistless energy.

Christians were like the wires, the Holy Spirit like the electric current flowing through the wires, and enabling them to give light or carry sound.

12. Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

13. him.

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of

14. But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

12. THOROUGHLY PURGE Siakalapiɛi, from dia, through, throughly, i.e., thoroughly, and κabaipw, to cleanse, to prune. He cleanses the wheat from one end of the floor through to the other.

Test.

WHEAT-CHAFF.—“I have read of a king, who, having no issue to succeed him, espying one day a well-favored youth, took him to court and committed him to tutors to instruct him, providing by his will that if he proved fit for government he should be The Prince's crowned king; if not, he should be bound in chains and made a galley-slave. Now, when he grew to years, the king's executors, perceiving that he had sadly neglected those means and opportunities whereby he might have been fit for State government, called him before them and declared the king's will and pleasure concerning him, which was accordingly performed, for they caused him to be fettered and committed to the galleys. . . . Thus he is a slave who might have been a king."-Rev. Thomas Brooks, Apples of Gold for Young Men and Women.

LIBRARY.-Lowell's "The Present Crisis";

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever, 'twixt that darkness and that light."

"A Study of Fears," by Pres. G. Stanley Hall, Clark University, especially chapter 26, embodying his conclusions.

PICTURES.- The Baptism of Jesus, Murillo (Seville), Doré (London), Giotto (Padua), Verrochio.

15. And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.

16. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him:

A. D. 27. January. BAPTISM OF

JESUS.

17. And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

13-15. BAPTIZED OF HIM: TO FULFIL ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS.— Baptism as a public profession, is a real and great aid to righteousness. But the mere outward form of washing with water will not cleanse the soul. Compare Macbeth's words after his murderous act:

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red."

the Dove.

16. THE SPIRIT OF GOD DESCENDING LIKE A DOVE.-"This is a most captivating symbolism. All along the ages it is the power of his gentleness and tenderness and meekness,-his love, in short,— that has been victorious. He has 'wooed and won.'"—Morison. We are apt to think of Jesus Christ as the only great manifestation of God's love. manifestation of God's love. abiding love in our hearts; even the Spirit produces, in the hearts of those who dwell in the spirit, the dove-like nature,-gentle, loving, attractive. The dove was historically connected in the Jewish mind with the abatement of the waters after the flood, and has become, as well as the olive branch, a symbol of peace, among all Christian people. The dove and the fire are complimentary symbols expressing different aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit,

But the Spirit is another Symbol of
The dove expresses God's

CHAPTER IV.

1. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

PICTURES. The Temptation of Jesus, Ary Scheffer (Louvre), Doré, Cornicelius, Perugino (Vatican), Botticelli (Sistine Chapel), Tintoretto (Scuola di San Rocco).

A.D. 27.

Jan. and Feb. THE TEMPTATION

WILDERNESS

OF JUDEA.

1. The Devil, Tov diaßóhov. Calumniator, slanderer, accuser, one who seeks by vile, false means to injure others by slandering God, misrepresenting the truth, and so leading men astray.

No Sham
Fight.

THE DEVIL (diabolos), in the original, is always with the article, and always in the singular number. Whenever the plural "devils" is used, it is the translation of another word, "demons." It is no more unreasonable to believe in a personal devil than in bad men, bad leaders on earth. To deny the existence of the devil is to lay much heavier charges of evil on the nature of man than does the belief in Satan. This temptation was real. It was no sham fight, no mere form, for example's sake. Satan was in earnest, and intended to prevent the coming of the kingdom of heaven with every force he could master, and every scheme he could devise. And Jesus knew he could choose good or evil, and the result depended upon his choice. There was no foreordained certainty of victory. President Woolsey asks: How is he an example to us, if his temptation is an unreality? No! They dishonor Christ's work who think thus."

THE GUISE OF SATAN.-Satan must have come in some attractive disguise. Satan could not have come as Satan, as Apollyon to Bunyan's Pilgrim, with horrible form and sulphurous and flaming breath; for then there would have been no temptation. He does not tempt us in that way, and Jesus was tempted "like as we are." He may have come as an angel of light, or perhaps as some traveler; or he suggested the temptations to his mind, as "the wicked ones whisperingly suggested many blasphemies" to Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.