If miracles be incredible, Christianity is false. If Christ wrought no miracles, then the Gospels are untrustworthy.

Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers.

Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sympathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over favorite temptations-these are the silent threads of gold which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God approves.

Concerning the prayer that mountains fall to crush and hide, Farrar , says: "These words of Christ met with a painfully literal illustration when hundreds of the unhappy Jews at the siege of Jerusalem hid themselves in the darkest and vilest subterranean recesses, and when, besides those who were hunted out, no less than two thousand were killed by being buried under the ruins of their hiding places."

It is easy to be a slave to the letter, and difficult to enter into the spirit; easy to obey a number of outward rules, difficult to enter intelligently and self-sacrificingly into the will of God.

But in the life of every man there are influences of a far more real and penetrating character than those which come through the medium of schools or teachers.

Speaking of the murder of the younger Hanan, and other eminent nobles and hierarchs, Josephus says, "I cannot but think that it was because God had doomed this city to destruction as a polluted city, and was resolved to purge His sanctuary by fire, that He cut off these their great defenders and well-wishers; while those that a little before had worn the sacred garments and presided over the public worship, and had been esteemed venerable by those that dwelt in the whole habitable earth, were cast out naked, and seen to be the food of dogs and wild beasts."