ticate spiders to drive out cockroaches: the profit of such devices, however, is generally dubious. Whatever the endless shifts and compromises of politics may be worth, they do not belong to the invincible strategy whenever they propose to vanquish evil by evil. Christianity implies a profounder process.

We shall not overcome evil by the representation of it. Ghastly things are represented in art on the plea that they will disgust. The stark expression of naturalism in literature is excused on the ground that its loathsomeness is discredited by being described. And the drama pictures vice and violence with moral design. No mistake can be greater. The fabled basilisk was said to perish if it saw itself in a mirror; it could not survive the sight of its own hideousness. Evil is not killed this way. It feeds on the vision. In respect to the spirit of terrible cruelty which marked the Renaissance in Italy, Symonds traces it to the influence of the fiendish atrocities of the tyrant Ezzelino. "In vain was the humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. .. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and by the glamour of loathing that has strength to fascinate, proved in the end contagious." The glamour of loathing! Wickedness at once repels and fascinates, too often in the end proving contagious and destructive. It is infectious to represent evil, often dangerous to talk of it, and even an injustice to ourselves to figure it in fancy. The morbid element in life must be dealt with in art and literature;

but it ought to be described, delineated, and dramatized with utmost reticence.

We shall not overcome evil by legislation. The assumption that a legal or political remedy will extinguish a social malady is arrant quackery. A real evil can only be dealt with effectually through legislation when such legislation expresses the sincere conviction. of a great body of righteous citizens. Statutes do nothing except as they acquire force in the living virtue of the community. Could law have abolished the sins and miseries of mankind, the Mosaic economy would have sufficed; but righteousness does not come by law either with the individual or the

race.

Evil is not overcome by denunciation. It is surprising how much efficacy is supposed to go with denunciation. Real, constructive, aggressive good is of far greater significance than eloquent invective; such invective has its place, but it must be accompanied by active practical effort, or it effects little more than summer lightning. Carlyle, in his review of Elliott the Corn-Law Rhymer, has a most instructive passage. "We could truly wish to see such a mind as his engaged rather in considering what, in his own sphere, could be done, than what, in his own or other spheres, ought to be destroyed; rather in producing or preserving the True, than in mangling and slashing asunder the False." But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves

a popular temptation. Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.

What this world awaits is personal, positive, constructive goodness. Not by law, legislation, and rhetoric shall we prevail, but by practical righteousness, noble philanthropy, intellectual and spiritual education; by the positive remedy of superior character, action, and institutions do we make it difficult for evil to survive. Whenever the chance offers, let us stamp upon a weed; yet let us be sure that it is only as we chiefly cherish the golden corn that we smother and destroy the tares which afflict society. It is the slow and expensive method, and the only effectual one. When the Church of God goes forth in holy character and action fair as the moon and bright as the sun, to every type of iniquity she will be terrible as an army with banners.

XV

ALTERNATIVE ROUTES*

And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. But he led them to Samaria.-2 KINGS vi. 19.

And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.-Ps. cvii. 7.

W

E are strangers in a strange world. We have not passed this way before, and some sort of leading is essential to us. We have put these two passages of Scripture together because they suggest the false and the true in the guidance of human life, for both are possible. May we so consider the subject that we may be led into the way everlasting!

I. THE BLIND ALLEY.

The King of Syria having sent an army to apprehend Elisha, the prophet prays that it may please God to afflict them with illusion, so that they may be confounded; and they are smitten as with blindness. Elisha then boldly ventures amongst them, as did Alfred into the camps of the Danes, and he succeeded in misleading them. "This is not the way, neither is *A sermon to the young.

this the city.... But he led them to Samaria," right into the midst of their enemies, into the focus of destruction. As a commentator remarks, There is almost a touch of joyful humour in the way in which Elisha played with the Syrians, eventually acting towards them most magnanimously, as the narrative shows. We now use this ancient story as a striking parable of the misdirection possible in human life. At this very hour multitudes of duped, confused souls are wandering like the Syrians, only with infinitely worse consequences.

1. Mistaken routes. There must be one path through life that is best for each of us; a thousand false ways are possible, but there is one right way, a path in which we walk with greatest security, efficiency, and satisfaction. Have not some of us consciously got the wrong route? We are dissatisfied with the principles we obey, the habits we follow, the friendships we have formed, the points at which we arrive. We are ever chiding ourselves, "This is not the way, neither is this the city." Thousands simply drift; they are carried hither and thither, according to the accidental set of the current. A ship called Fred. B. Taylor was run down and cut in two off your coast of Massachusetts. After the collision, the two parts of the derelict drifted in different directions. The stern floated almost entirely due north, and finally went ashore on the coast of Maine; whilst the bow drifted in a south-easterly direction, and was reported