The

would not "add to your faith, vice; nor to your virtue, ignorance; nor to your knowledge, intemperance; nor to your temperance, impatience; nor to your patience, ungodliness; nor to your godliness, unsisterly harshness; nor to your kindness, uncharitableness. very idea of this change revolts you! You would not for worlds reverse the laws of holiness in this way. The exclamation, "What fellowship hath light with darkness, or Christ with Belial?" rushes from your heart to your lips, the moment you glance at the glaring inconsistency.

There it is! I knew how the scale would turn, when you were fairly dealt with. It is not immoral freedom, that there is a craving for in your heart. You do not want a vice in the room of a virtue. Even the virtue you lack most, you do not exactly dislike. It is the trouble of cultivating it, that is the chief

hardship to you. If virtue would grow out of faith, or knowledge out of virtue, or patience out of temperance, or godliness out of patience, or charity out of godliness, without any effort or care on your part, you would have but little objection to any of them. You would even be delighted to " abound" in them all, if they would only come and abide, of their own accord. For, you see no beauty in impatience, no attraction in anger, no loveliness in caprice or peevishness, and no benefit in your besetting sin. You would be very glad, if all that is wrong in your temper and conduct would go away, at once and for ever.

Thus we begin to get at the secret of our reluctance to some duties, and of our failure in some graces: they require more diligence than we like to bestow upon them. If the fruits of the Spirit would only grow and ripen as easily as the weeds of nature spring up and prevail,

we should be quite pleased to bear a plentiful harvest of good fruit to the glory of God: but, finding that they are neither of spontaneous growth, nor of independent vitality; and that

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we must sow unto the Spirit," if we would reap of the Spirit, we yield to sloth, or invent excuses for barrenness.

Here, then, is the point at which you must make a deliberate and solemn stand for your own safety, by giving all diligence to add to your faith, that virtue of character, or that grace of temper, which you lack most. You know well what it is. You have found by experience that it does not come of itself. You feel that the absence of it, throws doubt and darkness upon both your calling and election. You see how its continued absence must con

tinue your suspense, and embitter, if not utWill you

terly darken, your dying moments.

not then make a determined stand, in order to

add that to your faith, the want of which, not only weakens your faith, but also keeps you in doubt of its sincerity? O, leave it to the blind and the base to juggle on this matter, with the dice-box of presumptive election. You are not "sure" of your election of God, and never can be, whilst you make no resolute effort to crucify your besetting sin, or take no pains to acquire the fruits of the Spirit, which you lack most.

Do consider also, that it is really much easier to excel in the very thing you fail in most, than it is to repair, from Sabbath to Sabbath, the injury which that failure is for ever inflicting upon what is good about your character and spirit. Why; one half of the time, thought, and prayer, which you must give, in order to get over the doubts and distress created by your besetting sin, would put an end to that sin. You do not escape from care or

labour, by leaving your chief fault to go on in The Sacrament comes round,

its own way.

and then you have to meet all the sad consequences of it there, or to pray them down by strong cries and tears in your closet. Affliction comes, and then you have to suffer under the painful consciousness that God is contending with you on account of that sin. Darkness and depression come, and then you find that it is the heaviest weight upon your spirits, and the eclipsing cloud upon your prospects. Thus you do any thing but save time or escape labour, by allowing your chief defect to prevail from year to year. The running account of its consequences must be settled, whenever the bills become heavy: and then they are not easily met, as you well know, and have often felt.

Another fact deserves your special attention: nothing vital or good in your principles or ex