sheep; they do not believe that they have done the things that they ought not to have done, they are not even prepared to admit that they have left undone the things that they ought to have done, and they entirely repudiate the idea that their spiritual condition is unhealthy. They object to call themselves miserable sinners in the Litany and the words of the Confession in the Service for Holy Communion seem to them secretly quite unreasonable, for they do not bewail their manifold sins and wickednesses. They do not feel that they have sinned grievously in thought, word, and deed, the remembrance of their sins is not grievous, nor is the burden of them in any way intolerable, for they support it very easily and cheerfully. They resent being asked to fast, or to show penitence, or to confess their sins; religion, they consider, is all very well in its way, but it must not come too much home, must not be too personal. It is all very well to confess your sins in public with a lot of other people, who no doubt have much reason to confess themselves sinners, but personally and alone to confess your own particular sins that is another matter altogether, and indeed intolerable.

But if religion is to be of any real use to a man it must touch the innermost springs of his being. It must be a living, ever-growing force, and not a mere dead memory, or an external formality, and the first step towards real religion is humility; even God can do nothing with the soul that is not humble, but is puffed up with a sense of its own importance and entirely satisfied that all is spiritually well with it. May it not be that the widespread refusal to kneel in the House of God is often an outward sign of this lack of a humble heart, unconsciously reflecting itself in the outward posture of the body?

Humility is the first step towards real spiritual progress. "I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," said our Lord. Those who think themselves to be righteous have no real use for the Gospel. They do not feel that they need it, and therefore it does not appeal to them, but when a man knows that he is a sinner then all is different. The Gospel seems to him to be his one hope

in the world. The call of Christ goes right to his heart; it is real and compelling.

The initial mistake which leads to lack of humility, and hence to lack of progress, is that we too often take our own ideal as a standard instead of Christ's ideal. Now it is a good thing to have an ideal. It will save us from much that is evil and lead us some way towards that which is good; but it will not lead us very far, and the more closely we attain to our ideal the greater the danger that we may be satisfied with it and cease to advance any further. When, however, we set before us, not our own, but Christ's ideal all is different. We feel at once how

There is no room left know that we are in

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utterly we have fallen short of it. for pride or self-satisfaction. We very truth miserable sinners, and the burden of our sins is really intolerable to us. When we advance, if by God's grace we do advance, we see ever fresh and higher ideals opening out before us, and we can neither rest nor be satisfied. Humility must inevitably follow. We know and confess our sins. We are veritably “ grieved and wearied" by the burden of them, and we know that it is only by the divine grace and help that we can possibly hope to please God. It is at this point that we begin to realise the ground of hope contained in the words of our text: "Being confident of this very thing that He Who has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ." We remember, or realise, that the motion towards God, which is the beginning of all true religion, did not come from ourselves. It was begun in us by God the Holy Ghost; and the end rests not with us but with Him. It is He Who, in the words of our Catechism, "sanctifies," or makes holy, the elect people of God. God has begun a good work in us, He has planted in us the seed of spiritual life, and He, the Lord and Giver of life, will cause it to live and grow if only we will let Him do so. Our business is to respond to, to co-operate with, the grace of God. Progress and growth we must have or we shall have spiritual death. The habit of settling down to be communicants only, and nothing more, is a very deadly

one, and entirely opposed to the spirit of Christ, Who bade us be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, and perfection allows for no sloth, no sleeping by the way, no self-congratulation, but a never-ceasing progress towards the never realised ideal of all good in God.

XLIV.-BEWARE OF MEN

Beware of men.-ST. MATTHEW X. 17.

HIS is one of those superficially simple, yet deep,

gradually grow upon us. It is not until after much experience and consideration of our own ways that we learn how necessary the caution is. The particular danger we will now consider is the danger of allowing ourselves to be intimidated out of right doing by the presence or influence of others, in a word of deficiency in what we call moral courage. Thus Pontius Pilate was convinced in his own mind of our Lord's entire innocence. "I find no fault at all in this man," he said, yet he had not sufficient moral courage to let Him go in the face of the violence of the Jewish mob and their threats of accusing him to Cæsar. But many a man will resist violence who yet yields to a subtler fear of men, the dread of being laughed at by some one whose opinion he regards. We have a good example of this in the life of Jacob. He was emphatically the son of his mother. His brother was always away hunting. Jacob stayed at home and was evidently as devoted to his mother as she was to him. Then came Rebekah's treacherous proposal to deceive the old blind father into giving the blessing to Jacob instead of, as he intended, to Esau. Notice the evident subordination of Jacob's mind to his mother's influence. She does not consult him, she simply tells him what she is going to do, and expects him to play his part in the deceit. "Go to the flock," she says, and fetch me two kids and I will make them savoury meat, and thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may

Notice Jacob's

eat and bless thee before his death." conduct. He evidently does not like the business. He feels that it is wrong all through. It is a wrong to God, Who had already promised him the blessing. It is a wrong to his old father, who trusted him. As he himself said, he was afraid of bringing on himself a curse and not a blessing. Yet he does not venture to say right out: "I cannot do this because it is wrong." Instead of that he acts as the moral coward always does, and tries to get out of the difficulty indirectly. He says, not what he feels, "It My father will find out

is wrong," but "It is not safe. that I am smooth and not hairy like my brother and he may curse instead of blessing me, when he finds out that I am like a deceiver." Note that Jacob does not tell his mother that he will be a cheat, but only that he will be like one. The consequence of Jacob's moral cowardice is that he cuts away the ground under his own feet, and, when his mother instantly devises a plan for obviating the danger which he put forward as an objection, he has nothing more to say. He cannot now, for very shame, fall back on the true objection, the moral one. He has made his objection and it has been fairly answered. He has nothing left but to embark on the dangerous and degrading path of deceit. He has, in cowardice, given up the one impregnable position. "It is wrong, therefore I will not do it," and every other objection is easily disposed of. I do not know any lesson that we Christian men and women need more to learn than this lesson of the danger of moral cowardice. "Beware of men," said our Lord. Men have given up burning and torturing those who refuse to violate their conscience, but there is none the less need to beware.

of

"It was not mine open enemy," said David, "that hath done me this wrong, for then perchance I would have hidden myself from him, but it is thou, my companion and own familiar friend." So it is with us. It is not only the persecution or jibes of ungodly men that we have to fear, but it is often the quiet influence of those who are near and dear to us, that makes such a call upon our courage, and too often has such a disastrous effect upon our lives.

But you may naturally ask, "Are our friends then all so bad?" By no means. It is quite possible that they may be really better than we are, and yet through our own fault have a bad influence upon us. We are none of us the same. Our conceptions of right and wrong, our enlightenment as to what is permissible and what is not, differ infinitely. Now it constantly happens that our ideas of right and wrong clash with those of our friends. We are not to conclude hastily that they are morally guilty because they do not see things just as we do. It may be that they have been granted a truer insight on that particular point, or it may be that we have. It may be that their different conclusions have been perfectly honestly arrived at. With that we are not concerned. The question is, are we through fear or respect for some one dear to us to act against what our conscience tells us is right for us? Are we to allow their smiles, or frowns at our scruples, to weigh with us more than what we believe to be the voice of God? In a word are we or are we not to be true to our convictions, to be moral heroes or moral cowards? easy indifference and amiable readiness to compromise is a poor exchange for a living conscience and a spiritual courage. How constantly is there a call on our moral courage in every day life. Some statement is made of which we utterly disapprove, some proposal that we feel to be morally wrong. There are occasions, and many, when silence is the best and wisest of all rebukes, because a grave silence is a rebuke which cannot easily give rise to retort and recrimination.

It compels attention and rouses reflection by its very intangibility. But silence may be the veriest moral cowardice. There are often occasions when we know that it is our duty to speak, and that our silence will be taken to imply consent or at least toleration; but how hard it often is to act up to our conscience! Selfishness whispers that it is not so very particularly our business, that perhaps something will turn up to make it after all unnecessary for us to act, that surely we cannot be expected to make ourselves so very uncomfortable, or to expose ourselves to