choose to travel forward thus, it is no wonder that their way is difficult, but it is not religion makes it so. Such is not the path the Saviour's previous footsteps have trodden into smoothness, and lighted with the lamp of his own Spirit. His is a way of uprightness, straight, direct, uniform. Their's is the way of compromise, of equivocation, of spiritual dishonesty. It is neither the broad road of the world, nor the narrow road of the gospel; and since there is no other, it is no road at all, but a trackless and inextricable wilderness. They who stray into it never know where they are; they ask directions of every body, and see not which way to turn all is hazard and uncertainty. What wonder if the ground be rugged and the walk uneasy? "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths." But the lamp of God is fixed where he lighted it; it sheds a steady blaze on the heavenward track, wherein they who walk can never be in darkness. But it is a lamp that cannot be removed; men cannot take it

down, and carry it with them wherever they choose to go. In their dubious wanderings through the ways of indecision, they may see it perhaps, just see it at a distance, mercifully shining to direct them back again; but many a trackless mile must be passed over before its beams fall again upon their steps-"God is not mocked." He has said that men must separate at the outset at the gate, and his people must walk apart; his people do not believe it. He reads in many an awakened bosom this resolution, "I will walk with God, but I will not separate from the world." Sometimes he lets them try, but there is anger in his acquiescence: "Ephraim is wedded to idols, let him alone;" "The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart." There was a straight way from Egypt into Canaan there was nothing to prevent; sooner must the Red Sea part its waters, than Israel's steps be turned aside; hosts of armed enemies could not have said to him, Go round.

It was his faithlessness which sent him into the wilderness. If any one who thinks he has entered by the gate of life, does not find within it a way of pleasantness and peace, does not see a lamp upon it, always burning to direct his steps, finds himself in a labyrinth of uncertainties, instead of a straight path, I entreat him to consider whether God has at any time seen in the secrecy of his heart a resolution such as I have named. Is it in acquiescence with God's plan, or in some one of his own devising, that so much of darkness and difficulty has been met with?

These remarks are not inapplicable to those mazes of doctrinal error in which some erratic spirits continually involve themselves, because they will not walk simply in the beaten tract. The way of salvation is plain and straightforward, long tried and safely trodden by the saints who have gone before us. But because it is so, the spiritual adventurer does not like it. Like the vagrant stragglers of an advancing army, they cannot content themselves with a steady pro

gression; they must be hither and thither with endless bustle and disturbance, though the end of all is only to return and rejoin the main body on the road. The world esteems them lost-it is mistaken; their head is turned, as the expression is, but their hearts are right with God; they have left all for Christ. The sober Christian sees them depart with pain, and vainly cries after them to return; yet does he not despair of them; he knows that mercy will not let them lose themselves. But when, with weariness, and fatigue, and many hurts, they come back again, and find themselves just no farther on their way to heaven than if they had walked simply forward with the company whose sobriety they despised, let them never say they got their hurts and dangers and fatigues on the straight path to heaven. This by the way. Our subject is rather with the practical difficulties of a religious course, arising out of the position of a child of God in an ungodly world. What is his position? The same exactly as his Saviour's was. "Ye are not of the world,

even as I am not of the world;" "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord;" "Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ;"" Crucified unto the world, and the world to us." Jesus was a holy being, dwelling for a short season among sinful creatures, in the dominions of that prince of this world, between whose seed and himself there had been enmity from the beginning. How was it to be expected such a one would live in such a world? Doubtless, had He consulted his own feelings, He would have withdrawn himself from all contact with creatures of a character and destiny so unlike his own. He would have spared himself their insults and reproaches, the sight of their sufferings, and the disgust of their sins, by living secluded till the hour of expiation came. This He did not; He could not thus have accomplished the Father's will, or fulfilled the purposes of his existence here. It is difficult to understand the delusion of those mistaken ones, who have thought to follow Christ by a life of solitude