is just provoking Him to do as He did to the Jews in His anger; to give them up to their own hearts' lusts, and let them follow their own imaginations. And if they have not God's Holy Spirit to help them, how can they go right for a single moment?

What then is to be done, seeing relapses are so very dangerous, and human nature so very weak? Some, perhaps, may try to flatter themselves, that they may as well continue in their first sin, and spare themselves the trouble of all kinds of repentance. That is, having a sickness on them, which is sure to be mortal, left to itself, they will not take the only medicine which can cure them, lest they should fail to take it properly, and relapse and die after all. I trust there are some at least here, who are more grateful to their Saviour, and more careful of their souls, than to deal so madly, so unkindly, with them. They will consider, what our Lord had pointed out as the true reason of these sad and frequent relapses. The evil spirit in the parable, returning to his house whence he came out, found it empty, swept, and garnished; and therefore it was no hard matter for him to enter in and dwell there, and seven worse spirits with him. So when any man's darling bosom sin had appeared to be cast out by the grace of God, it is but too common for that man to be found, when next the same temptation returns, with a mind empty, swept, and garnished to entertain it. That is, though men leave off their transgression for a while, they do not in earnest turn their hearts towards other and better things; they do not fill up the void in their desires, with thoughts of Him, Who is their only hope, Christ crucified for their sins;

they do not humbly and constantly seek that grace and strength from above, without which they can do nothing against God's enemies and their own. They imagine they have done great things in turning for awhile from some one evil habit; quite forgetting that God would have them not only obey Him but love Him; would have them love Him in Christ Jesus, with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their mind, and all their strength. That is the only preparation of heart which will enable you to resist your spiritual enemy, when having been once repulsed, he returns to the charge, in the hope of taking you unawares. An earnest wish to please Him who laid down His life for you, cherished and maintained by fervent prayer for the help of His Almighty Spirit, and by humble communion with Him in all the ways which He has ordained; this will keep you armed at all points. But without this true Christian piety, your partial amendments for the world's sake will not secure you from grievous relapses; will not free you from the sentence of those, who shall be found at the last day to have received the grace of God in vain.

SERMON XXI.

PERIL OF HALF-HEARTEDNESS.

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT.

S. LUKE xi. 23.

"He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me, scattereth."

OUR Lord in to-day's Gospel gives us an account of the kind of warfare which is continually going on between Him and the great enemy. It is not so much like regular fighting in the open field, with large armies on the one side and the other, coming to one large conflict, which decides the matter once for all. But it is a never ending course of severe and dangerous conflicts, in which one side disputes with the other the possession of every nation, every parish, every family, every individual person. Thus in one of the parables which you just now heard, the devil is compared to a strong man, a great warrior, in full armour, keeping his palace. We seem as we read, to have before our eyes one of the great lords of the Philistines, or one of those who in our own country, when times were unsettled, seized upon castles, and made them a kind of strongholds of robbery; so the prince of darkness and author of all evil, having once gained a footing in the world

by the fall of our first parents, has never ceased to occupy, one after another, the houses and hearts, the souls and bodies of men. Born in sin as we are, and children of wrath, each one of us is by nature a palace or castle of the evil one, a place where he abides, to do all the mischief he can, both to us and to all who come within reach of us. And as long as the Almighty permits this, his goods, the possessions of the evil one, are in peace, he has his own way with the unhappy sinners who are possessed by him, there is no struggle, no distress, no misgiving of conscience: people come to be past feeling, they give themselves over to lasciviousness, to commit all uncleanness with greediness: they go contentedly down the broad way. This is the full power of Satan of which S. Paul speaks, the condition of those who are without God in the world: a condition the more fearful, by how much those who are in it are less aware of it. Out of this our natural heathenish condition, God delivers men when He converts them and brings them by holy Baptism to be members of Christ as it is written, "a He hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son:" and again to S. Paul He saith, "I send thee to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." And accordingly it has been very common in the Church of Christ, and still is practised in some countries, to use in the Baptism service a regular form of exorcism, the priest in the Name of Jesus Christ commanding the unclean spirit to depart from the child or person

a Col. i. 13.

b Acts xxvi. 18.

to be baptized and we may understand in much the same sense our own short prayer which we offer up just before the blessing of the water: "grant that he may have power and strength to have victory and to triumph against the devil, the world and the flesh." Jesus Christ thus coming to us in Baptism, or if we have sinned afterwards, by true repentance and Absolution, is that Warrior stronger than Satan, Who will not let him possess his goods, his ill gotten goods, our souls and bodies, in peace. He cometh upon the old serpent as that Seed of the woman, promised of old time, to bruise his head, not without a severe combat, viz., His Death and Passion: that bruising of His Heel, His lower nature as man, by which from the very first He undertook to save us. The Son of God coming thus upon the evil spirit to whom we were in bondage, overcame him, took from him all his armour wherein he trusted, his power, craft, command of the world, the honour in which he is held by poor deceived mortals; all this Christ taketh from Satan, when He getteth the victory over him, and divideth it as lawful spoil by the rules of war among His own servants, the enemies of Satan. How is that? how may it be said that the spoils of Satan are divided among Christ's soldiers? Partly perhaps because from that time forward whatever portion any of us may have in the good things of this world, riches, power, pleasure, skill, wisdom, knowledge, &c., it is all given up to Jesus Christ and His service partly again because redeemed man is intended in some sort to fill up the place in God's world which the fallen angels have left vacant: as it is written, "we shall judge angels," and "we shall