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in its continuity of goodness, a finer poem, and one of God's own inspiring, than ever the intellect of Shakespeare conceived. No "Wild oats theory," no familiarity with wickedness, no indifferent tampering with evil, no varnishing of bad passions with the thin and poisonous veneer of sham philosophy, could have produced such a man as this. He has himself told us in grave and strong language the ideal and theory of his life. That ideal-and would to God that some of you were brave and firm and highminded enough to adopt it too-was this:-It was, even as a boy, to make labour and intent study his portion in this life;1 it was to draw his inspiration from "devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases; "2 it was to encourage in his own. soul such an honest haughtiness of innocence and selfrespect as to render it impossible to him to sink and plunge into the low descents of unlawful degradations; it was even without the oath of knighthood to be born. with the free and gentle spirit of the Christian knight;3 it was to cherish that fine reservedness of natural disposition and moral discipline, which, from his very boyhood, should bring home to his inmost soul the truth, that, "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." And I say that if, as Milton's latest biographer has imagined the scene, this pure and noble youth, with these high theories of life, had stepped into one of those tavern-meetings of wild wits

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1 Milton, Reason of Church Government (Works, ed. Mitford, iii. 141). Again in his Apology he speaks of "the wearisome labours and studious watchings in which I have spent and lived out almost whole youth." 2 Works. iii. 148. Apology, &c. (Works, iii. 271).

4 Masson's Life of Milton, ii. 404.

and careless livers among whom the less happy Shakespeare passed his days-had he hushed those loose jests, and that unseemly talking, with the grave rebuke that "he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himselfe to bee a true Poem, that is, a composition and patterne of the best and honorablest things," I say that if the young Milton, in the gravity of a faithful and highthinking innocence, had appeared among them and spoken thus, some might have laughed, and some resented, and some have blushed, but I read the greatest of human intellects very wrongly if, as he gazed on that bold youth, there would not have been in the eyes of Shakespeare a light of silent tears, and in the soul of Shakespeare a pang of sadness, a prayer of penitence, as his heart went sorrowing through all that faultful part.

Yes, because "there is an inevitable congruity between the tree and its fruit:" yes, because "he who would lay up for his mature years a store of that great virtue of magnanimity, which should look the whole world in the face unabashed, and dare to do the noblest things he has ever thought, that man must begin by preserving for himself from his earliest youth, and in the most secret sessions of his memory, a spotless title to self-respect."2 It is then to " this hill-top of sanctity and goodness, above which there is no other ascent but to the love of God," 3 that I would lead your footsteps, that I would turn your eyes. It may be that you will sin; and if so, assuredly you will suffer; and then you may repent, or you may not repent; and then will come what comes hereafter. But there is one lesson

1 Apology, &c. (Works, iii. 270). 3 Milton, Works, iii. 167.

2 Masson's Milton, ubi supra.

which, if you learn it, shall be as much more to you than all other lessons, as Eternity is more than Timeit is to "keep innocency, and take heed to that which is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last;" it is to say now, and as boys at school, as the one steady purpose and inspiration of a life spent in the continuity of holiness-O God, Thou art my God: early will I seek Thee; it is to take Christ as your Captain even now, in your earliest years, and following the divine and perfect example, to be from the first év tôis Tоû Пaтρòs, in your Father's House, and about your Father's business-to grow in wisdom and stature, and favour with God and man.

October 12, 1873.

SERMON XXX.

HOW TO RESIST THE DEVIL.

1 PET. v. 8.

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour : whom resist stedfast in the faith."

So speaks the Epistle of to-day. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Such is the warning and the promise of this evening's Second Lesson. "Get thee behind Me, Satan." Such, as the eternal defiance for all His children, was the answer to the tempter of our Saviour Christ.

I am not going to speak for a moment of what is called the personality of the tempter. Whether there be indeed an evil spirit, who, walking this world unseen, finds the delight of a detestable malignity in corrupting the soul of man, and sometimes by fleshly impulses, sometimes by worldly ambitions, sometimes by sins which seem apart from both, teaches man to destroy himself and to defy his God; or whether, on the other hand, these impulses, these seductions, these subtle and violent depravities, are the inevitable consequences of man's double nature and man's unfettered will; on either of these suppositions, the facts of our life remain the same, equally incapable of theoretical explanation, equally momentous in practical significance. It is of this

practical significance that I alone would speak, and I do so in the intense desire that God may bring home my words to your hearts, and by leading you to be more sober and watchful, may thereby make you more holy, and so more happy in your life here, more sure hereafter to inherit that blessedness which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, but which God will give to all them that seek Him in sincerity and truth.

II. I am speaking to tempted souls; every preacher in every church in England is speaking this day to tempted souls. The forms of the temptation may be very different; the difficulty with which you have to wrestle in life may be wholly different from that of the boy who sits next to you. Though the seven deadly sins have close affinities with one another, they do not equally tempt the same heart. And yet, by one or other of these -by pride and anger, by profanity or disobedience, by sloth or covetousness, by dishonesty or lust-by one or other in the perilous list of temptations-to one or other, in the dark catalogue of sins-we all are tempted. But it is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall. A temptation is not a sin. "Sentire tentationem," to be strongly tempted, is common to every one of us; tire tentationi," to be guilty of wickedness, need be the misery of none. The devil may suggest, but until suggestion has become acceptance we are still innocent. A flash of rage instantly checked; a pang of envy at once crushed down into the heart; an evil image and an impure thought, hardly present to the consciousness, till, like the viper on the apostle's hand, it is shaken off into the flame of our own moral indignation; anything that degrades us instantly flung away from us with every nerve and fibre of the strong and faithful soul—these are not sins. You may sometimes see a little black cloud

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