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His by a careful obedience; not for those who just Lu. 6. 46. call Him Lord, Lord, but do not in any sense the Heb. 2. 10. things which He says. Christ is the Captain of our salvation; but only soldiers have a Captain;

only fighting men can conquer. We shall hear on a future day that, so far from being annihilated, the power of Satan is rather stimulated by defeat: it is as if he were come down to earth with added wrath because he knows that he has but a short time. And therefore the first question for all of us is, Am I a fighting man? If not, the victory of Christ cannot be mine.

And therefore I would say to undecided persons; by which I mean persons who have not yet consciously enlisted themselves in God's service under Christ's banner; I would that you might be persuaded, by His grace working with the Word, to see what a formidable, what a tremendous struggle is really going on, whether you take part in it or no, between the condemned but not yet executed evil one, and the glorified but not yet unresisted Saviour. Half and more than half of our vacillation and of our lukewarmness in the things of the soul arises from shutting our eyes to the war which is raging around us. We soften down the expressions of Scripture till they mean anything or nothing. We give new names to old sins, and think that we have changed their character by a mere change of title.

We misplace or misread the claims of Christian charity, and make a merit of indulgence towards frailty, and almost of connivance at sin. And even this is not all nor the chief part of the evil. Our own inner self is infected by it. We try to drift easily down the stream of life, seeing everything in bright colours, amusing ourselves as we go, and avoiding everything that might trouble our repose or shake our security and self-confidence. And this kind of life is very pleasant, very alluring: it is tranquillizing in itself, and it makes us very agreeable one to another. But is it, is it-for that is the real question is it true? is it what God commands? is it what God approves? Open His Holy Word where you will; in its histories or in its prophecies, in its Psalms or in its Proverbs, in its Gospels or in its Epistles; and is not this written on every page, The world is one great battle-field, and he who will make it a mere spectacle, a place of idle lounging or of listless sauntering, is in reality fight- Act. 5. 39. ing against his God and forfeiting his immortal

crown?

Life is a serious thing; if only for this one reason, that in it a spiritual war is perpetually waging, in which Christ and Satan are the combatants, and human souls the possession to be lost or won. Be on Christ's side, and the victory is certain. In the Joh.16.33. world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,

I have overcome the world. In the world ye shall have temptation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome, I have cast out, the tempter. But remember also, He that is not with me is against me; and to be against Christ is to be a lost man. Happy they who, amidst whatever discouragements from without or from within, are yet bearing about them the one Service for badge of assured victory, We sign him with the sign Baptism. of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be

Infant

ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end!

TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY,

November 17, 1861.

LECTURE XXII.

REVELATION XII. JO, II.

AND I heard a great voice in the heaven saying, Now is 10 become (come to pass) the salvation and the might and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ, because the accuser of our brethren is thrown [down,] he who accused them before our God by day and by night. And they con- II quered him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life unto death.

LECTURE XXII.

REVELATION XII. II.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

We

Lu. 10. 18. Į BEHELD Satan as lightning fall from heaven. noticed last Sunday the stages by which that saying of our Lord, uttered on the occasion of the return of the seventy, was carried to its accomplishment. The words which He spoke, and the works which He wrought, on earth, were all so many blows struck at the integrity of Satan's empire over the world which he calls his own. The sufferings of Christ, His Phil. 2. 8. entire self-surrender, His obedience even unto death, and that death the death of the cross, were in a yet higher sense the ejection of Satan from his usurped dominion over man. Then were the words yet Job. 16. 11. more decisively fulfilled, The prince of this world Gen. 3. 15. is judged. It, the promised seed, shall bruise thy head, even in the very moment in which thou shalt

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