We sometimes misinterpret our Father by our symbols and our dogmas. The symbols and the dogmas are human, but the truth upon which these are based is divine, and it is neither hard nor illogical nor unreasonable. The controversialists take their separate ground, sometimes as far apart as heaven and hell, but the truth is the mean between these extremes. God is infinite in justice and infinite in mercy. Between them stands that cross, and the two are reconciled into one glorious, divine harmony. To-day, when some shock comes to us, some hellish crime like the cruel torture of our own fellow-citizens over in the Sandwich Islands a few days ago, or that horrible butchery of Dr. Pope in Detroit, we find a welcome escape valve for our righteous indignation in those awful words, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God;" but to-morrow the cross comes in with its tender, loving, divine interference, and we softly sing, through our glad tears, that matchless hymn of Faber:

"There's a wideness in God's mercy,

Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.

There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior;
There is healing in his blood.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man's mind;

And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

If our love were but more simple,
We should take him at his word,
And our lives would be all sunshine,
In the sweetness of our Lord."

Oh, yes, we want to keep the middle ground which lies upon the slopes of Calvary. Sinai, black and grim, stands just over yonder. Gethsemane lies here, and midway between them the law and the gospel join hands upon that central cross where Jesus died. Look, O friends! Look until you are filled with the sight, and then go out and everywhere tell men of Jesus. We have the border-land of a world of thought. Let us at some still hour, in some secret place, explore that which lies beyond our reach to-day, and feed meantime upon the manna that God measured up for us in this omer, "And sitting down they watched him there."

IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER?

BY REV. WILLIAM F. JONES,*

*

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Tecumseh.

Text: "Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, the morning cometh." Is. 21:11-12.

"Is the world growing better?" is a question of perennial interest. In our day pessimism is waxing bold, and asserts with confidence that the world is growing worse, and multitudes live and die in the gloom of that cheerless creed. We hear men on every side affirming the degeneracy of the present in every department of thought and life. In literature, they say, the great poets and philosophers are all dead and have left no successors; in politics the leaders of to-day are mere pigmies beside the giants of yesterday; in economics the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer; in government fraud and corruption are so universally rife as to promise the destruction of our free institutions. Tolstoi expresses the fear that civilization is moving rapidly toward the final crash and collapse.

It must be confessed that the world of to-day is bad

* William F. Jones was born in Danville, Pa., Jan. 19, 1863. Graduated from the University of Wisconsin, 1888, and from McCormick Theological Seminary, 1891. Pastor at Alma, 18911897; and at Tecumseh, 1897-.