olic movement right in principle, insist that its advocates are spoiling everything by their haste to restore all the old usages, and their readiness to follow modern Western authority rather than vaguely defined Anglican customs. It would often seem that the whole religious world about us had come out with swords and staves against us, swords to maim the Catholic advance in every way possible, cudgels to beat in to submission recalcitrant priests and parishes. We have a right to be indignant, as our Lord was that night, if our teaching and practice be characterized by the same frank loyalty to God and His revelation as our Lord's teaching and practice were. Is it always so? Do we not sometimes give occasion to the enemy by the way in which we fight the Church's battle? Yet if we be indeed quite simply faithful to the Master's teaching, we need not be disturbed though men count us robbers, and come out, with the force of this world, to put us down.

Second Thought.-Our Lord in His own words gives us a wonderful picture of His teaching, at once so loyal to the old tradition of the fathers, and yet so full of the new illumination of the Gospel, while all the time showing, in His own unanswerable way, that the new truths of His revealing were but the legiti

mate fruits of the lessons of the Law and the Prophets. "I was daily with you in the temple teaching." The conditions were strangely like those which we know now in these days of the Catholic revival in our own Communion.

The Jewish Church had a divine heritage, even as we, but it had been clouded by the traditions of a few hundred years, to which men were wont to give the authority of the divine Word itself. The Master ever insisted upon the ancient revelation; but tearing away the traditions of men which had made it of none effect, He brought out all its supernatural wealth of meaning, and went on to complete it with the doctrine concerning Himself, His incarnation and atonement.

We, too, have our temple environment in the Prayer Book, with all the wealth of its history; but we have ever to be rejecting the debasing traditions of the past few centuries, which Protestantism has encumbered us with, and making our bold appeal to the old traditions of the universal Church, which go back to Apostolic days. Our Lord's enemies could find no fault with Him till He began to teach plainly the truth about Himself. And so in these days they may not take us, so long as we can show how the Prayer Book affords us warrant for whatsoever we teach and practise. But there must come

the day of resistance and of warfare. The world cannot brook the Catholic doctrine of our Lord's divinity and of the supernatural. It will not endure the stern moral precepts of the Gospel ; and those who do not love Catholicity are ever ready to make common cause with the world against the principle of the Church's authority and the doctrine of the sacraments. We may not be taken now, but sooner or later the strife must come. The enemy but waits his opportunity.

Third Thought.-The Master adds, in explanation of it all, "But the Scriptures must be fulfilled." The wrath of man could do no more than bring to pass just what God in the prophets had said should come to pass. And it is not less true that the opposition of men against the Church, and their rebellion against her Catholic ways, but fulfil that which Christ declared plainly should come to pass. So we have first a test of our faith. Opposition to the Catholic doctrine and practice are just what we are to look for. If it were not so, something would be wrong, and very seriously wrong"Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." A Catholicity which is popular is not likely to be a true Catholicity. And we have secondly a test of our loyalty. We are to be

unflinching in our maintenance of the old faith, the old worship, the old morals. We are not to forget that in the person of our Lord, in His passion, the Church was deserted by her chiefs, left alone, bound, led captive by her foes, the power of darkness having its way apparently unhindered against her-nevertheless all of this outwardly hopeless experience was but one stage in her predetermined course to victory.

CXI.

"And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest Thou nothing? what is it which these witness against Thee? But He held His peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him, and said unto Him, Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."-St. Mark xiv. 60-63.

Exposition. Swete says: "To the direct question, Art Thou the Christ? solemnly put to Him on oath by the ecclesiastical head of the nation, Jesus at once replies. . . . The high priest admits the divine Sonship of Messiah: the Christ was the Son of God, since He inherited the promises made to David. Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. The words point to Dan. vii, 13, and Ps. cx, 1. Both passages seem to have been regarded by the Jews as Messianic, and to claim that they would be fulfilled in Himself was equivalent to