satisfy it. Men point out the better side of human nature; they praise the world, and would like to live in it always if they had health and moderate wealth will they never learn and understand that Calvary tells us what the world and human nature really are? God put them to the test; the all-holy, the loving, the pure, put Himself absolutely into their power; He let them have their own way just once, and they suspected Him, hated Him, for years persecuted Him in the meanest and most cruel ways, then tried Him by law, condemned Him, handed him over to the vilest of their kind to be outraged and sported with, and then made Him die a felon's death.* Such is human nature in its unregenerate state. God tells us that it is dead, corrupt, beyond hope, and must be buried out of sight, and that a new nature must be given us, supernaturally imparted and supernaturally sustained. Holy Baptism begins that work; but in many the work stands still, languishes, and is fading out of existence; in some it needs renewing; in all it requires constant care to maintain and carry it on to the end. The Cross stands in the midst of the world; some mock, but more pass by, one to his farm, another to his merchandise; their eyes cannot see "Sin is a traitor's act who aims at the overthrow of his sovereign ; it is that which-could the Divine government of the world cease to be-would be sufficient to bring it about."-H. N. Oxenham. the Son of God there, they are blind because they have not the Spirit of God. The spiritual life is a work, a business; it demands time, labour, perseverance; we must begin at the beginning; we must go to school and learn the rudiments, be punctual, diligent; we must do the same thing year after year. We must frequent the company of our Master and learn of Him; so only can we be His disciples, so only know Him, be made like Him, love Him, be loved by Him; so only be crucified with Him, and rise with Him to a better and never-fading life. CHAPTER XXX. THE SOUL IN CONFLICT WITH EVIL. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."— ROMANS xii. 21. "In God's war Slackness is infamy." G. ELIOT. .. Among the faithless, faithful only he; His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind." MILTON. "He who will fight the devil with his own weapon must not wonder if he finds him an over-match."-SOUTH. "So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke, MILTON. WE are surrounded with evil. That great mystery, the existence of which has been and ever will be such a riddle to thoughtful minds, that subtle power that is not subject to the law of God, is all about us and within us, and the solemn inevitable truth is that either we must overcome it or be overcome by it. This is the plain view of life which Christ gives us. day by day we resist vanquished by it. Sometimes it comes suddenly and forcibly upon us, taking us unawares; sometimes it works steadily and persistently, wearying us into compliance; sometimes it operates through the instincts and passions of our nature; sometimes through our constitutional infirmities ; it varies in method; it is different in different persons; different in the same person at different periods of life and under different circumstances. Sometimes it comes disguised as good to deceive us, but generally we know evil when it presents itself to us, and we Christians at least know its danger. We know that the conflict with it is just a struggle for life, like that of a man wrestling alone with a murderer; like a man swimming for life against a current; like a man fleeing from a wild beast, or bursting his way out of a burning house. Day by day evil meets us; and vanquish it, or we are If we are not conscious day by day of some struggle of this kind, and of getting the best of it, it is going ill with us. The lot of some is quiet and monotonous; great sins are kept out of their reach by barriers that they themselves have not set up; but for all that there is no barrier that can keep out all evil. There is no human being who has not the contest with evil to maintain. We see a man degraded by drunkenness; we see the prisoner at the bar of justice condemned for his crime; we read of those who have fallen under some terrible temptation: evil in these forms does not come near to some of us, they are too gross to attract or to be dangerous to us, but evil is about us nevertheless. There is evil in great houses and in most refined drawing-rooms; evil in cold selfish hearts that beat like that of Dives under fine linen; evil passing from lip to ear, from eye to eye; evil in the form of envy, or ostentation, or debt; evil in slanderous tongues; evil in God-forgetting moneygetting; evil in the unspiritual daily life of those whose thoughts never rise above the little passing affairs of each day's routine.* But it is vain to attempt to enumerate the forms of evil that beset us. Alas! evil is about our path and about our bed; some it degrades before men, but some it chains in golden fetters or silken bands, and they lie smiling, but with faces averted from God, dead while they live. Better than this the weakest Christian that is in earnest; better to fight and be wounded never so often, better to be beaten and driven away by enemies, if only we are still free; still sword in hand, fighting side by side with Christ, the sworn enemy of evil; still with eyes "It is not in the world of business; it is not among the poor, crushed to the earth by privation and suffering, that we must look for stony heartlessness. Say what men will of the heart. lessness of trade, it is nothing compared with the heartlessness of fashion. Say what men will of the atheism of science, it is nothing to the atheism of that round of pleasure in which the heart lives dead while it lives."-F. W. Robertson. |