awakening there is a terrible reckoning coming. Let me presume, as God's messenger, to speak plainly to your inner soul concerning that secret sin which is gnawing at your vitals. You would not have your acquaintances know about it for the world. "If God's right hand were to fling wide the door that guards that secret chamber, you would be despised by those who speak your name with honor and regard. Oh! the destruction wrought by secret sins, which no physician sees, nor surgeon probes, nor medicine cures; they eat on and on until we die, and then we find that, tho we may have hidden them from men, God saw them." Are you carrying the burden of a secret sin? Does fear sit on your pillow when you lie down at night, and whisper of detection in your sleeping ear, so that you dream in agony, and wake with shuddering cries upon your lips? My friend, God sees it all, and that sin so carefully hidden must face the judgment day and the light of the great white throne. But, thank God, there is one way you can deal with it, and that is yourself to bring your sin to judgment at Jesus' feet, and have it cleansed from your soul.

Only the atoning blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse the heart of its hidden sins.

After

At the Parliament of Religions, at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, some years ago, where were gathered the representatives of every religion on the earth, Dr. Joseph Cook, speaking of the certainties of religion, said, "Lady Macbeth hath bloodstains on her hands," and he asked the representatives of each religion what they could do to remove those stains. He waited for an answer, but all were silent. waiting until the hush was like the house of death he solemnly exclaimed, "Nothing but the blood of Jesus!" Solemn as the occasion was, the audience broke out in applause, agreeing that there is nothing that can remove the stain of a guilty conscience except the blood of Jesus Christ. Christ conquered on that open platform. Mozoomdar, the leader of the new dispensation in India, bowed his head and said over and over again, "The gentle Jesus." Every religious teacher there bowed before Him, and the choir of a thousand trained voices sang the Hallelujah Chorus, and the eyes of the great audience of reverent men and women

were turned toward heaven, as tho they could see the hallelujahs going up to His throne, and watched to see them caught up by the angels on high. All glory to Christ, who has the power to cleanse the sin from the darkened soul of man and fill it with the glorious light of goodness!

IV

It is here that we find the hope of the world. We look about us and are often tempted to discouragement. There is so much darkness, so much misery and sin in the world. And then we come back to God's Book and we find hope. Our hope is in the blest promise of God that the true light is to shine on until the whole world is illuminated. The noblest privilege any man or woman can have is to share in the battle going on among men for a bright and pure world. When I ask you to ask you to become Christian I am calling upon you to become a soldier in that glorious struggle. We are not discouraged by the outlook of today or to-morrow, but in the strength and

a

light of God we see the day of triumph coming.

The fog that is on the world to-day,

It will be on the world to-morrow;
Not all the strength of the sun can drive
His bright spear's furrow.

Yesterday and to-day

Have been heavy with care and sorrow,

I should faint if I did not see

The day that is after to-morrow.

Hope in to-day there is none,

Nor from yesterday can I borrow.
But I think that I feel the wind

Of the dawn that is after to-morrow.

The cause of the people I serve to-day
In impatience and sorrow,

Once again is defeated, but yet 'twill be won
In the day that is after to-morrow.

And for me with spirit elate,

The fire and the fog I press through,
For heaven shines under the cloud

Of the day that is after to-morrow.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

"And God divided the light from the darkness."Gen. 1:-4.

A

ND that is what God is trying to do all the while in this world. He is seeking to bring the whole world into the light, and crowd back ignorance and sin and sorrow into "the outer darkness." That is the mission of Christianity upon the earth, and nothing that has ever existed on the earth has been such a tremendous success. We have always lived with so much of the light of Christ about us that many are misled and fail to appreciate how dark the world would be without Christ. Dr. Young J. Allen, a missionary to China for the last forty years, in a recent address at Birmingham, Alabama, said that he had never understood the Gospel until he went to China, and he proceeded to say that in seeking for some way whereby he might illustrate and measure the Gospel to our