appointment. But though willing in the main purpose of his mind, and in the general resolution of his heart, he is found unwilling in the particular instances which make up his actual salvation. He is willing to be delivered from all sins, until he is tempted. Each particular temptation has its lure and its spell to draw him to a new consent. His old disease returns upon him in detail. There is an uncertainty, a weakness, and a wavering about such men, -a readiness to pass impostures upon their own conscience: and all these make it hard for them to win eternal life.

The reasons of this are many. The power of his old habits is upon him still; and, as the original fault of man's nature inclines him to evil generally, so they give a man a leaning and proneness to particular sins. His will is weaker on that side where it has been wont to yield; he is more vulnerable, more liable to be tempted,—as a constitutional liability to any sickness makes a man more readily take infection; for his former habits have laid up a provision for future falls. They leave in him something upon which temptation may kindle; in the words of a wise spiritual guide and bishop of the Church, they are like a taper newly quenched, which starts again into a flame at the first approaches of a light. Most unlike to Him in whom the prince of this world, when he came,

had nothing on which to fasten. On Him temptations fell harmless, as sparks are quenched upon the surface of a pure fountain.

Once more; in such a man as we speak of, the new strength of better habits is not as yet confirmed. And here again the power of past evil reappears. It not only claims a dominion of its own, but it mars the beginnings of a holier character. It perpetually breaks up the first foundations, unsettling them as soon as they are laid, baffling our toil, and mocking us by continual defeats. No man knoweth, but God only, what is the hurt inflicted upon man's spiritual nature by familiar consent to evil; what is the deterioration of the moral being in the scale of His redeemed creatures. It scathes and deadens the spiritual sense, and leaves fearful scars and seams on our inmost soul. It seems to make us less susceptible of holiness: for by a course of disobedience not only is the antagonist resistance of the mind increased, but even its passive powers are diminished. As, for instance, what is it that hinders the deeper sorrow of repentance, but a former habit of treating sin with levity? What makes devotion well nigh impossible, but a past habit of living without prayer? What makes it so hard to sustain a habitual consciousness of God's presence, but an early habit of living without that consciousness? There has

come over the spiritual nature an inaptness and often an antipathy. As in some men the keenness of the eye and ear is blunted, and the very first laws of harmony and beauty become unintelligible, and even irksome; so is it with holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. We squander and abuse the mysterious powers of our spiritual being, and daily create around us new obstructions in the way of our salvation, narrowing the path and straitening the gate by which alone we can enter into life.

But hitherto I have seemed to speak only of those who, after an evil or worldly life, turn to repentance. And yet this warning is for all. It was spoken absolutely. To all mankind, as fallen men, the way of life is not more blessed than it is ar duous. And that for this reason, because "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." There must pass on each a deep and searching change. And this change, though it be wrought in us of God, is wrought through our striving. It is no easy task to gird up the energies of our moral nature to a perpetual struggle. The most watchful feels as one that strives against the half-conscious drowsiness of an oppressive poison; the purest, as he that leaves upon driven snow a dark and sully

1 1 Cor. xv. 50.

ing touch; the most aspiring, as a man that aims his shafts from a strained and slackened bow; the most hopeful of eternal life, as one that toils for a far shore in a rolling and stormy sea. It is a hard thing to be a Christian. It is a hard thing to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. It is a hard thing to force our way, making an armed retreat into a position of safety; for sin, that great and manifold mystery of ill, whose root no man hath ever found, whose goings forth were before the world was made, whose legions are unseen, hovers around with a terrible strength, and still more terrible craft. It ever hangs upon our skirts, and harasses our way to life; it waits through every day, and watches in every hour; it besets all our paths, and lurks beside all our duties; it mingles in our toils, and hides in our secret chamber, and masks itself under our religion, and follows us to the altar of God. Through all this we have to win our way to life. "We wrestle not with flesh and blood"-for then we might endure it, beholding our enemy and grappling with him face to face," but we wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." These throng the way to life, and cast down the unwary, and overbear the waver1 Ephes. vi. 12.

ing soul, and mar the beginnings of repentance: therefore are they who find eternal life but few.

Such, then, is the warning of our Lord. And such are some of the many difficulties which beset our way to heaven. We are bid to strive. Salvation is not the by-play of our idle hours, when the mind is wearied with overtoiling for this life, or cloyed with the oppressive customs of the world. It demands a manly and a resolute heart, or that still strength which faith gives to the most feminine and gentle spirit.

Beware, then, of an easy, acquiescing temper, which lulls you to be secure. What is meant by

"wide is the gate and broad is

the way that lead

eth to destruction," but that a man needs only to follow his own will; only to let his thoughts, words, and lusts wander and run on unchecked, and he is in as fair a way to perish, as a ship without a helm in a flood where there is but one haven and a thousand shoals? By a natural law man leans towards destruction. It may be called the gravitation of a fallen being. Let a man only be at ease in himself, satisfied with what he is, and consent to the usurping customs of the world, drawing in the unwholesome breath of refined evil, and letting his moral inclination run its natural course, without check or stay, and he will most surely tide onward, with an easy and gentle motion, down the