end. You know there is an organizing mind which unfolds the story and that the poet will certainly bring the whole to a climax by the ultimate vindication of righteousness and the doing of poetical justice upon malefactors. To this end every shifting of the scene, every movement of the actors, every by-plot and underplot is made to contribute. Wheel within wheel is working together towards this result. Well, Life is God's great Drama. It was thought out and composed in the Eternal mind before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made. In time God made a theatre for it, called the Earth; and now the great Drama is being acted thereon. is on a gigantic scale, this Drama. The scenes are shifting every hour. One set of characters drops off the stage, and new ones come on, to play much the same part as the first, only in new dresses. There 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

It

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 Suffering. 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 advan tage over us; for we are not ignorant of his devices." How then shall we fight wisely? This is our ques tion in the present Chapter.

Now to fight wisely is not to fight at a venture, but with a definite aim. "So fight I," says the Apostle, 66 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 con figuration, 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 comformable 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. Its especial property is to lurk: sometimes it puts on the mask of a 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.

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

The

words may have been; but he did not say them because they were true, but because his lust of com mendation 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 that 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? world dignifies it with the name of honourable emula tion, 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