Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive. The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work. In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this? Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God. Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day, would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was, in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had for centuries been shaping the history of his nation. It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy. But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly