integrity, to place it at a disadvantage with the least noble of its ancient competitors. The pure Spirit of Love will win the devotion of all honest hearts and candid minds. But the insistence on these antiquated formulas is sure to repel an increasing number of the most thoughtful and enlightened from organised Christian fellowship. The only serious reason for preferring the independent to the hierarchical forms of church organisation at the present time is the tendency of the latter to keep up these forms of intellectual imposition and imposture. Until the church as a whole shall rise to the standards of intellectual honesty now universally prevalent in the world of secular science, the mission of the independent protest will remain but partially fulfilled. "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men." Any thought of the reputation or respectability or honour a right act will bring, just because it puts something else in place of Love, destroys the rightness of the act and the righteousness of the doer. Righteousness will always remain a dry, dreary, forbidding, impossible thing until we welcome right as the service of those whom we love, and the promotion of interests we share with them; and shrink from wrong as what harms them and defeats our common ends. Without Love, righteousness either dries up into a cold, hard asceticism, or evaporates into a hollow, formal respectability; and in one way or the other misses the spontaneity and expansion of soul which is Love's crown and joy. "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." Love is too intent on its objects to be aware of itself or call attention to its own operations. The air of doing a favour takes all the Love out of an act; for Love gives so simply and quietly that it seems to ask rather than bestow the favour. In this way both giver and receiver together share Love's distinctive reward of two lives bound together as one in the common Love of the Father. "When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee."