the matter, but also by the significance attached to it by other people.  There are other points of conduct regarding which we have no need to consult any prophet; points in which we are asked to conform to a custom we know to be bad, or to follow and countenance other men in what we know to be unwholesome for us.  To conform in such cases is to train ourselves in hypocrisy; it is to say Lord, Lord, while we allow the world actually to rule our life.

THE LAME MAN AT THE TEMPLE GATE.

Acts iii. 1-8.

Although this miracle was followed by consequences so serious as to make it a landmark in the history of those early days of the Church, it was not itself the result of deliberation or contrivance.  Peter and John were, as usual, on their way to evening prayer in the Temple.  These two men had much to gain from one another, and they kept much together.  In study, in business, in Christian work, in life generally everyone is the better of the friend who supplements his own character.  Happy he whose closest friend of all provokes only to love and good works, and calls out only what is best in him.  It is, if not essential to the growth and health of the spiritual life, most desirable to have a friend with whom intercourse is absolutely free and frank; one to whom it is the natural thing to explain the actual state of the spirit, and utter our most sceptical or our most devout thoughts, and who can be trusted to respond charitably, confidentially, and wisely to all communications.  The Church owes much to the friendship of Peter and John, as well as to each individually.

On how small a contingency did this miracle hinge.  Had Peter happened to have had a penny he would have dropped it in the beggar’s palm and passed on, leaving him content with the alms and unconscious of all he had missed.  And it is sometimes well for us, as for Peter, that we are baulked in our first intentions towards our friends and our first attempts at being of use.  It is well, for example, that we cannot at once rescue every one out of sickness and poverty, for thereby our love is compelled to a deeper consideration and to a thousand kindnesses which find their way to the heart and leave for ever a treasure of happy memory.  Our inability to gratify the obvious and clamant want of our friend keeps our thought hovering around him until, at last, we discern how we can confer a better and more enduring, because a more difficult and thoughtful, gift.

Probably Peter had often passed this lame man before.  To-day the two Apostles have not together as much as the poor widow with her two mites, and they are passing and thinking as little as we sometimes think of leaving the needy to the charity of others, when suddenly it occurs to Peter that, after all, he has what may be of more service to the beggar than silver or gold.  “What I have, that give I thee.”  The best help we can give is not that which we can