I wish that were the whole; but sometimes this spirit of the world comes even into a heart into which the Spirit of God has entered. A man makes his confession of Christ and enters the Church. He becomes zealous for the good of others. He runs well for a time, as St. Paul said, and you picture for him a noble career, until presently he becomes inconstant; drops a service here and there; has less and less interest in divine things. He says his business requires it, which is not true. He says the necessities of this world require it, though they never do. The spirit of the world tells him, "You cannot afford to be an earnest Christian man. Give that over to people of leisure. You, with your peculiar temperament, were never made to be useful; with your circumstances it was never expected that you would be a witness for Christ. You, with the society you move in, with your associates, with your pleasures-how hopeless it is for you to try to be a Christian." It is said that it is hard to be a Christian in these days. If it is, it is not because the Spirit of God is not here, but because the spirit of this world is here; and many a Christian heart gives up its faith, casts away its joy and its strength, sinks into uselessness, and makes itself more and more the centre of itself, until the Spirit of God is grieved. I will not say how far a man may go in doing despite to the Spirit of God and yet attain to heaven at last.

But it is so sad that a man should go to heaven alone, and that all the path which he treads should be filled with a grieving of the Holy Spirit.

What is the remedy? Why, simply yielding to the Holy Spirit. If he inspires you with any new thought, take it; if he tells you there is something to be done, do it; if it is impressed upon you that there is something to say, say it; if he comes with prohibition, let the prohibited thing alone. Expect nothing but the gentle touch upon your heart. If anything interferes with your spiritual welfare, leave it. The Holy Spirit means to use your work and your play; to use your learning and your life. You are not to cut off the right hand unless it offends; you are not to spare it if it does offend you.

This subject is one of extreme solemnity. But I have to leave you, as it is always best for a preacher to do, unto the divine guidance; and I do it with this word. If there is borne in upon your thought and mind to-day the feeling of anything which you ought to do, obey the impulse. Trust God and move on. The first step in the spiritual life is the first step towards the eternal glory. It is not difficult to understand that sin against the Holy Ghost which hath no forgiveness. It is the final parting of the soul from God. When God the Father comes, if he is rejected, there remain the Son and the Spirit. When God the Son comes, if he is rejected, there

remains still the Spirit. Christ may bring a man to the Father, the Spirit may bring a man to the Son, and so to the Father; but when one has despised the Holy Spirit, there is nothing beyond.

If I may use such an expression, a man has three chances in life. He can make up his life under God the Father, If he loses that, he may perhaps make it up under the Son. If he loses that he may perhaps make it up under the Spirit. But if he loses the Spirit of God, there is nothing afterwards; no covenant mercy, no encouragement. A man has nothing to hope for, if the love of God has not held him, and the cross of Christ has not won him, and the Spirit of God cannot persuade him.

The unpardonable sin against the light is to put out the eyes. The unpardonable sin against food is to refuse to eat. The unpardonable sin against God is not to let God govern us and save us. The unpardonable sin is to throw away the last of a man's three chances of life; to refuse that Spirit which, moving in our spirits, would bring us to Christ the Saviour, and to God the Father of us all.

O Spirit, beautiful and dread!
My heart is fit to break
With love of all thy tenderness
For us poor sinners' sake.

IX.

TURNING NORTHWARD.

[A NEW YEAR'S SERMON.]

SCRIPTURE LESSON: Phil. iii.

TEXT: Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; turn you northward. Deut. ii: 3.

HIS was Mount Seir.

TH

The children of

Israel had come thus far on their way towards the land which they were to possess. They tarried around the mountain. It was not Egypt, with its bondage, its idolatry, and its despair; but it was not the land of promise, with its wealth, its opportunity, and its blessings. It was not here in the wilderness that they were to build the city of God, to raise up the prophets and apostles of the world, and to form a State and Church which would represent the kingdom of God upon the earth. Yet they lingered; they compassed the mountain many days, until at last the word of him who had called them out of Egypt found them: "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; turn you northward."

It comes to us very often in life to need the summons which came to these our brethren. We are inclined to remain where we are. We become engrossed with certain pursuits and pleasures, and come to think that life has found its limits and henceforth must be little but repetition; until the voice of God comes to us, sometimes speaking in our conscience, sometimes through a world which calls us to higher duty, sometimes directly by the Spirit of God in our spirit, sometimes through the providence which tears us away from our place, or removes those things which have detained us. Thus are we made to take up again the way and the work of life that we may finish that whereunto we are created. There are two movements in this world. They have been aptly described as the circular and the onward movement. The one is that movement by which a man goes the round of his daily duties from week to week and from year to year, repeating over and over those things which it is well for him to do, yet making no advance. There is another movement wherein a man, fulfilling the course of his ordinary duties, still makes an advance, going farther and farther from the place where he started and towards that which is to be the crown and reward and rest of his life. A very obvious illustration is in the motion of the earth, with its circular movement upon its axis, yet with that which is its larger movement by which it pushes on continually, day