to their work disappear, and the morning of victory dawn. And just so, little sins are the preparation for greater. Little neglects make ready the final denial of Him who bought us. The way to the abyss of ruin is paved by transgressions that seemed almost trivial. All sin tends to multiply itself. The heathen writer said: “Whoever yet was content with one sin?" And when Linnæus, the botanist, declared that three flesh flies, with their amazing powers of self-multiplication, would devour the carcass of a horse as quickly as would a lion, he gave a symbol of a terrible truth in the moral world. He who admits to his bosom one darling sin, however hidden and seemingly insignificant, has no security that this sin, with its progeny, will not devour him. A single hole in the levee of the Mississippi will let the waters through, though only drop by drop comes through at first; each drop will wear the channel larger, till the stream becomes a rivulet, then a river, and the flood covers and devastates the whole country round. But whether fast or slow, the law is the same. Sin grows by what it feeds on; it is self-propagating-the least sin indulged and cherished brings ruin.

If religion teaches us anything, it is the value of trifles. "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost" has a world of significance in it. It is only the old law of political economy that all wealth is the result of saving. It is not what we spend, but what we save, that makes us rich. Every great fortune began in caring for the little. It makes no difference how small it was at first. Economy and thrift can

make it in the end a million. One cent put at com

pound interest will in time be a mine of wealth to its possessor. And religion is styled by Christ himself a "laying up treasure." Every true thought, every emotion of humility, trust, worship, every deed of submission, benevolence, forgiveness, is so much added to our heavenly treasure, if it be only exercised in God's appointed way through Christ and in conscious dependence upon Christ. Not one of them all shall lose its reward. But, on the other hand, every little deviation from the path marked out by conscience and Scripture is a wasting of our substance, a casting of so much heavenly treasure into the sea. There is not only a laying up of treasure in heaven, but a "treasuring up of wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."

And so the best evidence of Christian progress and of the reality of our Christian life is to be found in a growing faithfulness in little things. In certain great things ordinary self-respect may keep us true to our covenant, but only the love of Christ within the heart is a sufficiently constant force to keep us minutely true and honest. When I see a new convert unwilling to do small duties and always on the lookout for large ones, I tremble for him. He is called to live for Christ, and life is not made up of large duties half so much as it is of small. He who has no conscience about small matters can never live for Christ at all. And there is no sign of growth more cheering in a Christian than his determination to honor Christ, not on set occasions simply, but in the thoughts of every hour as it flies, and in those

minor matters of family and social life in which most men are conscious of no responsibility. Increasing sensitiveness of conscience, enlarged views of obligation, willingness to do humble work for Jesus-these are the true tests of Christian advancement. How is it? Do you find, as months go by, that your performance of public and private duty becomes more regular and punctual and conscientious? Do rainy Sabbaths keep you less from the house of God than they used to? Do wandering thoughts in prayer come less often, and when they do come, trouble you more? Do worldly enjoyments seem less attractive, and does your real happiness rest more entirely in God than it did years ago? Do you look less to others for your standard of duty and more to God's word and the example of Jesus? Are you more anxious that every day should see something, however slight, done for your own advance in holiness, for the salvation of souls, for the honor of God? Are you more and more conscious of living under the eye of God and of being personally responsible to God? Do you feel every year that your interests and the interests of God's church are identical, that the prosperity of the church depends upon you, that the relation of membership in the church makes every one belonging to it a brother or sister to you, for whose spiritual peace and prosperity you are to pray, for whose growth in grace and usefulness you are to labor, by kind words, by visits of Christian love, by public exhortation, by private sympathy in their several griefs and trials? These are none of them great duties; they are the little, common things of

Christian life; they are on that very account the best tests of our Christian state. Let us judge ourselves by these, for by them we shall be judged. I trust that many of us can fairly say that the application of these tests shows that the past few years have been a gain to us and not a loss. But if it be not so, let us face the truth. Let us not think that some great thing we have done can balance the evidence which these little things bring against us. Regularity, punctuality, conscientiousness, fidelity to Christ and his church in little things, these are the tests of character. For it is Christ himself that says: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

I would that I could reach those who are impenitent to-day and convince them how important are those seeming trifles that keep them away from Christ. It is some sin, my friends, that ties you to the world and prevents you from being saved; and unless that sin be broken up, you have no hope of salvation. A long time ago I had a room in a hotel by the seaside. From my window I could see many a bright-colored boat floating on the waves. never moved from its place. twice a day. The boat rose and falling of the water. When the tide went out, it seemed as if it must float out on the current that swept so grandly out to sea. I wondered why it was so motionless, so utterly unaffected by the streaming in and out of the water around it. One day I found the secret. A cord no thicker than your little finger

Q

But there was one that The tide came and went and fell with the rising

tied it to a buoy just beneath the surface. If that cord had only been cut by a penknife stroke the boat would have been free to obey the strong influences that urged it from its place. But it was fast; the little cord was as good as a ship's cable; until that was severed all movement was impossible. It is so with the sinner. The tide of religious influence around him comes and goes. He is moved by it more or less, as the boat is lifted and then falls again, but times of religious interest come and go, and he is just where he was before. Why is it? Ah, there is a cord that holds him, and that cord of pride or self-seeking or sensual appetite or worldly plans or bad associates he will not cut. The Spirit draws him; once loosed from his sins by a sharp decision of the will and he might be borne outward and onward into the measureless ocean of God's love and peace, but he delays he is bound to the earth, he is a captive of Satan. It seems a little thing that hinders him from obeying the gospel, but that little thing may be a chain to keep him out of heaven through all eternity.

And yet it is not because this one sin is the only sin, that giving it up is so important. There are many sins, but this is the one to which the soul clings and where the stand is made against God. It is the point of the wedge, itself thin and apparently insignificant, but backed up by the whole sin of the heart and life. Break this point and all opposition ofttimes ceases. How often the convicted sinner seems willing to surrender all but one thing to God. Everything else apparently ready to be given up, but one cherished friendship, one darling plan of life, one