consist with spiritual growth; but the shaking of a man's stedfastness by a sudden tornado of temptation (which was St. Peter's case) may do so. The great question is whether, after every such fall, the will recovers its spring and elasticity, and makes a fresh start with new and more fervent prayer and resolve Indeed, the making many fresh starts after relapses of infirmity is a hopeful sign of growth. In order to any great attainment in spiritual life, there must be an indomitable resolve to try and try again, and still to begin anew amidst much failure and discouragement. On warm dewy mornings in the spring vegetation makes a shoot; and when we rise, and throw open the window, we mark that the May is blossoming in the hedgerows. And those periods when a man can say, "I lost myself sadly yesterday in temper or in talk; but I know that my crucified Lord took upon Him those sins and answered for them, and to-day I will earnestly strive against them in the strength of His Spirit, invoked into my soul by earnest prayer:" these are the warm dewy mornings of the soul, when the spiritual life within us sprouts and blossoms apace.

Again, it should be remembered, lest any whom the Lord hath not made sad should be put out of heart by the application of the test, that all real growth is very slow, and its actual progress imperceptible. The seed sown on stony ground, which forthwith sprang up, because it had no deepness of earth, proved a failure. Jonah's gourd, which came up in a night, perished also in a night. We never see plants actually growing; we only take notice that they have grown. He whɔ would form a sound judgment of his spiritual progress must throw his eye over long, not short, intervals of time. He must compare the self of this year with the

self of last; not the self of to-day with the self of yesterday. Enough if amid the divers and shifting experiences of the world, and the manifold internal self-communings arising thereupon, that delicate plant, spiritual life, has grappled its fibre a little deeper into the soil than it seemed to have done in an earlier stage of our pilgrimage, now fairly past.

Let those characters, for whom they are designed, take to themselves the comfort of these considerations. But let not the indolent and formal derive from them the slightest encouragement. Again we say, that the one sign of vital Personal Religion is growth. There is no growth in a life of spiritual routine, in a mechanical performance of duties, however important, or a mechanical attendance upon ordinances, however sacred. There is no growth without zeal and fervor, and that sort of enthusiastic interest in religion, with which a man must take up any thing if he wishes to succeed in it. There is no growth in the deliberate adoption of a low standard, in the attempt to keep back a moiety of the heart from Christ, in consenting to go with God thus far only, and no further. There is no growth in contenting ourselves with respectability, and declining the pursuit of holiness. There is no growth without fervent prayer, "in spirit and in truth." And, finally, there is no growth (whatever be the hopes with which we may be flattering ourselves)

without continual and sincere effort.

But it is now time to conclude this chapter. And we will do so by remarking that if an examination of conscience should show that we are not growing in grace, there is but one alternative, which is that we are falling back. An awful truth; but one as infallibly certain as any other phenomenon of our moral state,

Neither in mind nor body does man ever

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continue in

one stay." His body, as we have seen, is constantly throwing off old particles of matter, and appropriating new ones. Every breath he breathes, every exertion of his muscles and limbs, every particle of food he swallows, makes some minute change in the bodily framework, so that it is never entirely the same. Of each individual among us it may be said with truth at any given moment, that he is either rising to, or declining from, the prime of life and the maturity of his physical powers. And the mind no less than the body is in a continual flux. It too has its moral element, the society in which it lives,-it too has its nourishment, which it is constantly imbibing,—the influences of the world and the lower nature, or those of the Spirit of God. One or other of these influences is always imperceptibly passing into the mind and effecting a gradual change. And the awful thought is, that if the change is not for the better, it must be for the worse; if the mind is not appropriating the higher, it must be appropriating the lower influences; if there is no growth in grace, there must be a growth in worldliness and sin. Strictly speaking, nothing is morally indifferent; every moral action leaves its impress upon moral character. Our fireside conversations, our thoughts as we pass along the streets to our daily work, our spirit in the transaction of business, all have some amount, small though it be, of moral value; all are tending more or less remotely to form the character; amid all, and through all, we are either making spiritual progress or falling back from the mark. With what solemnity do these thoughts invest even the most trifling incidents of life! It is impossible to pass through them and come out the

same; -we are changed either for the better or for the worse. We will look to it, then, that in future at least it shall be for the better. If it have been hithert for the worse, we will this very hour embrace that already purchased pardon, which obliterates in an instant the guilt of a whole past career of sin, and that grace, proffered by Christ no less gratuitously, which renews the will unto newness of life. And tomorrow we will, in the strength of that grace, make a new beginning, taking up this anthem into our mouths: All my fresh springs shall be in Thee.”

CHAPTER III.

OF THE ENTIRE DEPENDENCE OF SANCTITY ON CHRIST, AND OF THE RELATION WHICH THE MEANS OF GRACE HOLD TO HIM.

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.

"I am the vine, ye are the brancyes: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for with out Me ye can do nothing.”—ST. JOHN xv. 4, 5.

THE subject of this treatise is Personal Religion, or in other words, that "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." It is evident that we shall be liable to misapprehend the subject fundamentally, unless we have at the outset a clear notion of the nature of Christian holiness. It is to give the reader this clear notion that the present chapter will be devoted.

In the passage which stands at the head of it, there

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is a slight inaccuracy of translation, which requires to be set right before the force of Our Lord's words can be thoroughly appreciated. "Without Me ye can do nothing," should rather be rendered, "Apart from Me," "separate from Me," "in a state of independence on Me, ye can do nothing." "Apart from Me," by no means conveys the same idea as Without Me." The latter would imply merely that unless Christ concurred with His people in their efforts, they could do nothing. "Apart from Me," goes beyond this. It implies that He is the alone originating source of all sanctity in them. "Without" the concurrence and assistance of a strong person, a weak one cannot lift a heavy weight; but the dependence of the weak person on the strong in order to lift the weight, is not the dependence which the word here employed indicates. 'Apart from" the soul (or principle of life) the body is motionless, and cannot stir a finger. This is the sort of dependence indicated in the passage before us. Christ is to the Christian the alone source of sanctification or spiritual life, just as the soul is to the body the alone source of natural life.

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I do not know that any other prefatory observation is needed, except that "the fruit" mentioned in this passage generically is specifically, and in detail, those fruits of the Spirit which are enumerated by St. Paul in Gal. v., "Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." The fruit consists in certain holy tempers and affections of heart, the possession of which will uniformly ensure right conduct, but which are much more easily seen to be absolutely dependent upon Christ's working than right conduct itself is. If a man be commanded by God to do any action whatsoever, he can string up his