more wilful. And it is well too to look back on our past lives, and to detect sin in things we had not remarked before, and, long as we may have passed it over, to confess and ask pardon especially for it. For after all we have occasion continually with David to pray not only to be kept from presumptuous sins", but to have mercy shewn to the sins of our youth, and to our secret faults.

Finally, let nothing be suffered to deceive us, so far as light is given, and more and more of it will be given if we will but use it. The safe side is to be strict with ourselves, for we shall not see things with so strict and holy a judgment as God sees them; For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

SERMON XIX.

PREACHED AT ST. MARY'S ON THE SECOND SUNDAY

IN LENT.

1 THESS. iv. 1.

We beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk, and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.

It may seem strange, at first sight, that the Apostle, immediately after this exhortation, mentions a duty so evident and elementary, so absolutely necessary to the very beginning of a Christian course, as abstaining from fornication. The slightest attention, however, is enough to discover that his earnest request goes to something farther than this. The desire that they would abound more and more is repeated even in the matter of brotherly love, of which he says expressly that there is no need for him to write to them, meaning of course that he needed not tell them in general that it was a duty, or what were

the obvious ways of discharging that duty, but still that their practice might and ought to be carried farther.

So also in this case, his object is not merely to repeat the commandments and the threatenings, which he expressly says he had before delivered to them in the name of God, but also to bring them on to a higher degree of inward purity, and a clearer view of those principles of holiness which keep the mind and thoughts from inclining toward sin. He would have every man get his whole body and mind under complete government for holy purposes, and for that place of honour which God has assigned to man in His new Creation, and which allows not of the inward desire or wilful imagination, any more than of the outward act of evil. And this meaning of the next verse is more evident from the Greek, and from a comparison of some other passages, than at first reading it in English.

There is reason, indeed, to think that our Lord's spiritual view of the commandments of the moral law was taught to converts at a very early stage of their progress. And no doubt evil thoughts, whether of the kind just now alluded to, or those of revenge, or of ambition, and love of this world's gain,

and the like, were forbidden from the very first. Still, in most men, the outward acts of sin are sooner discontinued, or more easily avoided, than the thoughts are brought into discipline; and both these must be done before the soul can take in a clear and perfect view of its high estate in Christ.

And as the man who diligently purifies himself is said to become a vessel unto honour, meet for the master's use, and as sin may grieve the Holy Spirit till He depart from us, so is more grace given to him that hath. And the Church wisely leads all her sons through a discipline of penitence and self-denial at this time, that all may fight the good fight so long as they are exposed to the assaults of the enemy, whether on higher or on lower ground; that all may purify themselves even to the utmost, since their object ought to be, to become pure even as their Lord is pureo.

And in the Gospels for this Sunday and the next, our thoughts are directed to the casting out of devils, and the danger of their return, as they were last

temptation of our Blessed

a 1 Tim. ii. 21.

c 1 John iii. 3.

Sunday to the

Lord, that we

b Matt. xiii. 12.

may be purged from all that is earthly, sensual, devilish, whether in act or in thought, before we proceed to the especial contemplation of Heavenly Mysteries. Today, in particular, a prayer against evil thoughts, that may assault and hurt the soul, is connected with the Epistle and Gospel, and thus the time seems to be marked for an effort to strengthen ourselves against them in the strength that is given us from above.

Too many persons, it may be feared, shrink from the conflict which is required in order to our becoming masters of our own thoughts. They know that we cannot hinder this and that from coming into our minds, and do not like the trouble of fighting against evil when it comes. When, indeed, they are directly tempted to open sin, they are alarmed perhaps, and turn away from it in fear and confusion, and it may be afterwards are more proud of having resisted this temptation, than humbled to think that when the tempter came he found so much on his own side within them, and that after all they have only shunned that which would have forfeited or risked their credit with the world, or at least with friends whom they value, and that they cannot tell how far