seem to be entanglements, perplexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions without end; but you may be sure there is one ruling thought, one master-design, to which all these are subordinate. Every incident, every character, however apparently adverse, contributes to work out that ruling thought. Think you that the Divine Dramatist will leave any thing out of the scope of His plot? Nay, the circumference of that plot embraces within its vast sweep every incident which Time ever brought to birth.

Thou knowest that the mind which organized this Drama is Wisdom. Thou knowest more: thou knowest that it is Love. Then of its ending grandly, wisely, nobly, lovingly, infinitely well for them who love God, there can be no doubt. But remember you are an actor in it; not a puppet worked by wires, but an actor. It is yours to study the plot as it unfolds itself, to throw yourself into it intelligently, warmly, zealously. Be sure to learn your part well, and to recite it manfully. Be not clamorous for another or more dignified character than that which is allotted you,be it your sole aim to conspire with the Author, and to subserve His grand and wise conception.

Thus shall you cease from your own wisdom. Thus shall you find peace in submitting yourself to the wisdom which is of God. And thus, finally, shall He pronounce you a good and faithful servant, and summon you to enter into the joy of your Lord.

CHAPTER V.

FIGHT WISELY.

"So fight I, not as one that beateth the air."-1 COR.

ix. 26.

THE three elements which enter into the composition of the Spiritual Life, are Acting, Fighting, and Suffer

ing. Of the first of these we have spoken; and now, from the consideration of the Christian in his duties, we pass to the consideration of him in his temptations, or, in other words, we proceed to consider him as fighting. Two of the main sources whence temptations arise are the Devil and the flesh; or, in other words, our great spiritual adversary, and the traitorous correspondence which he meets with from the heart of man. Now the

heart being, according to the sure testimony of God's Word, deceitful above all things, and Satan's method of operation, too, being by stratagem rather than open violence, the first method, therefore, of meeting temptation aright must be to meet it wisely. Policy must be opposed by policy, according to the warning of the Holy Apostle: "Lest Satan should get an advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his devices."

How then shall we fight wisely? This is our question in the present Chapter.

Now to fight wisely is not to fight at a venture, but with a definite aim. 66 So fight I," says the Apostle, "not as one that beateth the air." In which words he is drawing an image from the boxing-match in the Isthmian games, and declares that in the spiritual combat, he does not wear out his strength by vain flourishes of his hands in the air, but plants each blow certainly and with a telling aim (οὕτω πυκτεύω ὡς οὐκ ἀέρα δέρων).

We read indeed that King Ahab was shot by an arrow sent at a venture, that is, without deliberate aim: but this is told us to magnify the Providence of Almighty God who, in His designs of wrath, can direct the aimless shaft whithersoever it pleases Him; not surely to teach us that aimless shafts are likely on common occasions to be successful. Yet what is the warfare of many earnest and well-intentioned Christians but the sending of shafts at a venture? They have a certain notion that they must resist the evil within and without them; but then this evil presents itself in so many forms, that they are bewildered and confounded,

and know not where to begin. And so it often comes to pass that their time and labour is thrown away in repressing symptoms, where they should be applying their whole energy to the seat of the disorder.

On the other hand, the first work of the politic spiritual warrior will be to discover his besetting sin, or sins, and having discovered it, to concentrate all his disposable force before this fortress.

Just as each individual has a certain personal configuration, distinguishing him from all other men at first sight; just as his hair has a certain colour, his limbs a certain make, his features a certain cast; or just as each of us is said to be born into the world with some one defective organ, be it heart, liver, or lungs; so in the moral constitution of each individual there is some sin or sins, which more than others is conformable to his temperament, and therefore more easily developed by his circumstances,-which expresses far more of his character than others. This bosom sin has eminently the attribute which the Apostle ascribes to all sin; it is eminently deceitful. especial property is to lurk: sometimes it puts on the mask of a virtue or a grace, not unfrequently that of some other sin; but masked somehow or other it loves to be, and the longer Satan can keep it masked, the better it serves his purpose.

Its

Let us give some examples of a bosom sin thus masking itself. With a very large proportion of mankind, the besetting sin is vanity. Who knows not how this detestable sin frequently apes humility, so as really to impress its possessor with the notion that he is humble? Intensely self-satisfied in his heart of hearts, he depreciates himself, his talents, his successes, his efforts in conversation. What follows? A natural reaction of public sentiment in his favour. Men say to him, as in the Parable, "Go up higher." He has been fishing for compliments, and compliments have risen to the hook. Is it not so? For would he not have bitterly resented it in the inner man, had any of the company taken him at his word, and coolly

answered to his self-depreciation, "What you say about the inferiority of your talents, and the paucity of your successes, is no doubt perfectly true?" True the words may have been; but he did not say them because they were true, but because his lust of commendation craved some smooth word which might pamper it. Here is the bosom-adder of vanity coiled up in the violet-tuft of humility. To take another case. It is part of some men's character, as their friends would phrase it for them, that they cannot bear to be second. Whatever they do must be done (I do not say commendably well, for all things that are worth doing ought to be done commendably well), but superlatively well, brilliantly, so as to throw into the shade all competitors. Accordingly, they are disposed to decline or abandon all pursuits in which they feel they can never excel. Now what is this feeling, when we bring it into the court of conscience, and come to examine and scrutinize its ground? The world dignifies it with the name of honourable emulation, and accepts it as a token of a fine character. And thus much is true, and may not be denied, that there is usually some stuff in the characters, whose leading principle is such as I have described. In that singular way in which one principle hangs together with another, like bees clustering on a flower, or limpets on a weedy rock, this emulation, as it is called, is somehow connected and intertwined with that energy and resolve which are the raw material from which earthly greatness is manufactured. But, judged by the mind of Our Lord Jesus, which is the one standard of saintliness, how does the sentiment sound, "Because I cannot be brilliant, so as to outshine all rivals, therefore I will be nothing ?" It jars strangely, I think, with the music of those words, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve." And again with those: "Let nothing be

done through strife or vain glory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself." And again with that touching expression of Our Lord's humility, prophetically foreseen and predicted by the Psalmist, long years before His coming in the flesh: "Lord, I am not high-minded; I have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself in great matters which are too high for me; but I refrain my soul, and keep it low, like as a child that is weaned from his mother; yea, my soul is even as a weaned child." Alas! when we apply to this feeling the Ithuriel spear of God's Word and Christ's Example, we find it to be the bosom-adder of vanity again, lurking under the marigold of honourable emulation.

Again; a bosom sin, that it may the more easily escape detection and eradication, will wear to a superficial observer the mask of another sin. Indolence, for example, is a sin which carries with it in its train many omissions of duty, and specially of religious duty. Prayer or Scripture reading is omitted, or thrust away into a corner, and gone through perfunctorily, because we have not risen sufficiently early to give room for it. Things go cross during the day in consequence; irritability of temper not soothed by God's Blessing, or calmed by His Presence, throws our affairs into a tangle. We trace it all up to the omission of Prayer, of which we accuse ourselves. But the fault lies deeper. It was not really an indisposition to Prayer which kept us from it. It was indolence which really caused the mischief.

One of the first properties, then, of the bosom sin with which it behoves us to be well acquainted, as the first step in the management of our spiritual warfare, is its property of concealing itself. In consequence of this property, it often happens that a man, when touched upon his weak point, answers that whatever other faults he may have, this fault at least is no part of his character. This circumstance, then, may furnish one clue to the discovery; of whatever fault you feel that, if accused of it, you would be stung and nettled