have any pretensions to sincerity, you will read again, now, the list itself: "Add to your faith virtue; (that is, courage to avow and evince your faith;) and to courage, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But (she) that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that (she) was purged from (her) old sins. Wherefore the rather give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall

never fall."

Now whatever else you fear or feel on reading this very solemn and heart-searching Oracle, you are deeply conscious of, and concerned

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about, one thing;-that you may never fall." That has fixed your eye, and affected your heart. You cannot bear the idea of falling away from God entirely and finally. You may not be so fascinated by the prospect of "an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," as for the sake of that, to add "all these things to your faith." You may even be so heartless about heaven, as to care little how you enter it, if you are only admitted at last but you are not so lost to all right feeling, as to care nothing about missing that kingdom, or falling short of it. Well; make the most of this feeling, if it thus be the best and the strongest of your present religious emotions. It is a good feeling in itself: and, accordingly, the fear of falling away is often appealed to in the Scriptures. Rom. xi. 17, 22.

You do, then, fear apostacy.

You are

neither so "high-minded," nor so earthly

Well;

minded, as not to fear falling: nor so "doubleminded" as to pretend to be fearless. so far, you are not "blind," even if you "lack" some of those things which constitute the security against falling. You do not, however, "see afar off" (are not long-sighted-do not look without winking) if you imagine that you can safely continue to lack any of these things. Each of them is an essential feature of that "Divine nature" or Holiness, without which you cannot see the Lord. It is by having them all in you, so as to "abound” in them, that "calling and election are made sure," and " never falling" certain.

Are you beginning to tire of this process of reasoning and remonstrance? It is not mine, remember! Alas, I feel it, like yourself, to be very strict, and even somewhat stern too. Again and again I have been tempted to shut

my eyes upon some of the many things, thus inseparably linked together, and then laid altogether upon me, as necessary to keep me from falling. I have caught myself asking, "Cannot calling and election too be made sure, without adding so many things to faith?" Can I not "stand" at less expense of time, thought, and effort? Who gives all this diligence, to make sure against falling? Do all fall, who "lack" any of these things? Have I not stood for years, although I have not abounded much in some of these virtues? Do I not see around me not a few, who are doing even less to stand than myself, and yet not at all afraid of falling, nor thought to be in any danger of it?"

Thus there are moments of temptation, and moods of temper, when one could almost fly into a passion, as well as get impatient, with the strait meshes of Peter's net. These toss

ings and twistings are not made, indeed, in order to escape from the Fisherman's net altogether. We do not want the liberty of those fishes which keep out of the gospel-net, nor of those "bad" ones which are sure to be 68 cast away," when it is drawn to the shores of Eternity but we are, alas, prone to take more liberty than God sanctions.

How is this to be cured? It is a bad, yea, a dangerous disposition. Do not, however, make it worse than it really is. I mean,—do not conclude that all is wrong in your heart, because all is not right yet. Look not so exclusively upon the things which you lack, as to overlook entirely the things which you love in religion. You have no objection to do some of the things which are thus insisted upon, as securities against falling. Nay, there is not one of them you would throw out of the list, or set aside altogether. Consider: you