And we see at once why such a past, as has just been held up before us in the illuminating testimony of many witnesses, should be one of God's most potent ministers of teaching for us. It has one precious use which the present cannot have, from the very fact that it is more remote from us. We cannot always look dispassionately, if we would, at the great questions which are bound up with the application of religion to our own case. The very strength of our need of these helps and powers affects us too deeply to let us always feel sure that we can trust even the spiritual instincts which mightily affirm the truth of what the Christian Church offers in its Master's name. But when we study the working out of this religion by men. remote enough from us to be unobscured by the mists of our own mental and spiritual atmosphere, we are taught to believe in its enduring and supreme value. You have seen how wonderfully mere distance and elevation map out for a traveller the way by which he has journeyed. He goes on by a dusty road, seeing only a little way before or behind, but climbing, climbing, as the way winds, till at last he stands on the highest ridge of the line of hills that has enclosed his forward vision; from that fresh, cool height he looks back to find the whole way that he has travelled laid out before him. What was blind before is now clear. Not only the way that he has come, but the whole surrounding landscape and the way which lies before him stand forth.