they do not _less_, but rather _more_, than others; only under somewhat sorrowful conditions, having spirits prepared for what is more than human, and being obliged to move within limits that are only human. The worth of such a life depends little on its _quantity_; it is an affair of _quality_ alone. These highest ends of existence have but slight relation to time. Years can not mellow the love already ripe, or purify the perceptions already clear, or lift the aspiration that already enters heaven. GROWING. By F. R. HAVERGAL. Unto him that hath, thou givest Ever “more abundantly.” Lord, I live because thou livest, Therefore give more life to me; Therefore speed me in the race; Therefore let me grow in grace. Deepen all thy work, O Master, Strengthen every downward root, Only do thou ripen faster, More and more, thy pleasant fruit. Purge me, prune me, self abase, Only let me grow in grace. Jesus, grace for grace outpouring, Show me ever greater things; Raise me higher, sunward soaring, Mounting as on eagle wings. By the brightness of thy face, Jesus, let me grow in grace. Let me grow by sun and shower, Every moment water me; Make me really hour by hour More and more conformed to thee, That thy loving eye may trace, Day by day, my growth in grace. Let me, then, be always growing, Never, never standing still; Listening, learning, better knowing Thee and thy most bless’d will. Till I reach thy holy place, Daily let me grow in grace. [_December 10._] THE GOODNESS OF A GOOD MAN. By ALEXANDER McLAREN, D. D. “He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.”—Acts xi: 24. You remember how once a young man came to Jesus, with much beautiful youthful purity in his life and youthful enthusiasm in his heart, and in his eager way, prefaced his question with a lightly-uttered “Good Master.” Christ answered by trying to make him feel how much more the word meant than he had ever seen. “Why callest thou me good?” said he, not thereby rejecting the term for himself, but setting the youth to ponder its deep meaning. And whenever we have learned to feel “how awful goodness is,” we shall be ready to listen to Jesus saying further: “None is good but one, that is God.” By that saying he neither means to deny his own goodness nor that of men who will take up their cross and follow him, but only to remind the light-hearted inquirer, who was so ready with his conventional bestowment of the epithet, and so eager to know what he was to do for eternal life, that there was one source—and only one—-of goodness, and, therefore, that the only way to be good was to have our emptiness replenished by his fullness.