They

are not ready for the hour of opportunity when it comes. have not that keen discernment, that mastery of details, that ripened judgment, which only preparation can give.

Now, this is not only true in financial and worldly matters, but in every department of human life. If a man is faced the right way, some day he will arrive; God will take care of that. But, on the other hand, if a man is faced the wrong way he is sure in the end to arrive at disaster. He may go a long road before he reaches it, but in the end it will be ruin; God will take care of that, too. In the forty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah God speaks through the mouth of his prophet concerning people who have taken just the opposite course from those the description of whose conduct makes our text. And God says, "I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt, to sojourn there, and they shall be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by a famine; they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine." The man who sets his face away from God will after awhile reach the land of famine. The young prodigal in the Gospel tried it, and in the days of his feastings and revels he seemed far enough away from it; but the famine with its herd of swine and its dry husks came sure enough in the end. Samson found the same truth. In the days of his strength, when his enemies were like reeds in his hand, when he could pick up the gate of a city on his neck and carry it off in derision, the famine day of weakness and slavery seemed far off; but he turned his back on God, he turned his face toward self-indulgence and sin, and the famine day of blindness and grinding in the mill, and the bitter death of the suicide, awaited him in the end. He had his face that way and in God's time he arrived.

The question with which I would probe your conscience if I could is, "Which way are you facing?"

People often try to cover up that question and hide it even from their own hearts, but there can be no greater folly. If a man is walking toward the deadly quicksands or toward the edge of a precipice, it does not make him doom the less certain if he shuts his eyes and goes forward blindly. The danger consists in his being. faced that way.

The pastor of a church in New York city, one Sunday evening when there was a deep spiritual influence in the service, spoke to a lady who was a stranger to him concerning her personal religious. condition. She parried his question at first by declaring that she

could never make a public exhibition of her feelings; religion was too sacred for such a display. The pastor repeated his question. Again she used the foil; she would never do certain things which she had detested from childhood. A third time he asked, "Are you a Christian?"

Sharply, defiantly, came the answer, "Yes, I am!"

A few days later the earnest minister received a letter from the conscience-stricken woman, begging him to pray God to forgive her the lie of which she had been guilty when she said that she was a disciple of Jesus Christ. The days that followed, she told him, had been days of terrible restlessness; she could find no peace, she was in terror by day and by night. She closed the letter with a piteous appeal that he should come to see her. He went at once, and found her under deepest conviction of sin. It was not long before he discovered that circumstances were such that she was determined not to make a public decision for Christ. Could she not find rest in some other way than by the hard way? It was impossible; the minister saw that; and in a little while she, too, felt it, and then he left her to fight the battle with herself.

All through a sleepless night the conflict went on, while the angels of the Lord kept vigil with her, and ministered unto her when she grew faint. The next day she sent the pastor word that the decision had been made, and that she now was willing to do anything that God required of her. That was the beginning of peace. She had turned her face toward heaven. No one will ever do that in vain.

It is idle and wicked for us to quibble as to just how far we have gone wrong on the path away from God while our faces are still turned the wrong way. No matter where you are on the downward path, if your face is turned toward darkness and despair you are certain to arrive there if you keep your face that way. And though you are at the door of the gaping gulf of hell, if you but turn your face toward heaven in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, you are certain to arrive there if you keep your face that way. I'm not asking you how far you are on the road, but which way your face is set?

Rev. Campbell Morgan, the English evangelist, tells how there once came into his inquiry room in an English city a ragpicker, a great, gaunt old man who had grown hoary in the service of sin and Satan, but God had shown him his heart hunger and had revealed the Christ to him, and there in the inquiry room the man knelt, and Mr. Morgan knelt by him, and felt quite at home as he spoke of the

blood that cleanseth from all sin. He felt that it was just what the man wanted. Presently some one touched him on the shoulder and said, "Here, won't you speak to this man?" He looked around, and there, kneeling next to him, was the mayor of the city, a man about as old as the ragpicker, but a man who had all the marks of culture and refinement, a man of position. There he was at the mercy-seat, also, seeking forgiveness for his sins. Mr. Morgan happened to know that six weeks before the mayor, who is a magistrate in English cities, had sentenced this man to a month's hard labor, and he had been out for only about two weeks, and there they were side by side, and the minister turned from, the ragpicker to talk to the mayor about his soul's salvation. Soon the light that had broken into the ragpicker's heart illumined the heart of the magistrate, and the preacher found that the blood that was needed in the one case was needed in the other. And when those men got up from their knees the mayor went over to the ragpicker with the new found love glowing in his face, and taking him by the hand said: "Well, we didn't meet here last time." The old fellow looked up, with the new hope beaming in his eyes, and replied: "No, we will never meet again like we did the last time, praise God!"

O my friends, don't quibble about where you are on the road, but if your face is turned away from God and heaven turn yourself about at once!

Turn your face toward heaven now, and some day, in God's good time, you shall arrive. The path will grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Dr. Ray Palmer wrote that most beautiful and spiritual of American hymns, "My faith looks up to Thee," when he was a very young man. In the morning of life he set his face toward heaven and God. He lived through a long and beautiful and useful life, ever drawing nearer to the goal he had set for himself in his youth. Dr. Theodore Cuyler tells how, a little while before his death, Dr. Palmer officiated at a communion service in his church in Brooklyn. While the cup was being passed to the communicants the dear old man, with a tremulous voice, began to sing his own heavenly lines,

"My faith looks up to thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Savior divine."

Dr. Cuyler says the great audience were moved to tears, for it seemed to them that they were listening to a rehearsal for the celestial choir. If you want to reach a goal, set your faces thitherward

now.

17

"Therefore thus saith the Lord God; an adversary there shall be even round about the land; and he shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled. Thus saith the Lord, as the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria." Amos 3:11-12.

This is a part of the prophecy of Amos concerning the sad and bitter fate which was to fall upon the people who had forgotten God, and had undertaken to succeed and prosper in their own strength. They had oppressed the poor, and had gathered spoils by conquest, and had grown proud and arrogant because of their ill-gotten wealth. In their pride they thought they could bid defiance to righteousness and justice. But God declares through the mouth of his prophet that there is always an adversary, invisible though he may be, who watches in the defense of the outraged poor, and stands to bring to judgment those who oppress the weak for gain. The story is related of a great judge that on one occasion one of the attorneys was not present when the trial should begin. The other attorney arrogantly demanded that the trial should go on. The judge at first mildly suggested that they had better wait until the opposing lawyer could be present. But the lawyer refused. "Well," said the judge, "you can do as you wish, but I advise you to wait, for if we go ahead now I shall feel under obligations to look after this man's case myself." The lawyer took the hint and decided that it would be better to wait. God's Word assures us everywhere that there is an invisible adversary that stands for the defense of the weak and the oppressed, and who follows like a Nemesis on the trail of the oppressor.

There is here a very striking presentation of the truth that only righteousness can exalt a nation, and that wealth and power gained through cruel oppression will prove but as the treacherous sand under a nation's feet, and will certainly bring it down to ruin in the end. We have had illustrations in plenty in modern times to show us that that is still true in God's world. Two or three hundred years ago Spain was by far the proudest, the richest, and the most powerful nation in the world; her wealth had been largely gathered through the spoils of brutal and cruel conquest. One of these brutes that overran Mexico held captive an Indian prince, and made him buy his ransom by making his followers bring gold enough to fill up, as high as his head, the room in which he was confined. So brutal

and cruel were the Spaniards that the natives of the New World said it would have been better that their lands had been given to the devils in hell than to them; and that if the Spaniards went to heaven when they were dead, the Indians had no desire to come there. Spain thought she could bid defiance to justice and humanity, but an invisible adversary hung about her history, and one after another her colonies have been taken away from her, and all her ancient glory has gone down in shame and disaster. What she has left might well be compared, as in the text, to the shepherd who "rescueth out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear."

There is another nation that seems going in the same way to ruin. France seems to think she can defy justice and righteousness, and in the face of the protest of united civilization has been trampling justice and humanity under foot in the Dreyfus case; but unless she learns wisdom speedily she will find that not even the beauty and splendor of Paris, the fertility of her fields, the glory of her science and her artists, will be able to save her from the invisible adversary that stands to break in pieces the nation that defies God and righteousness.

But it is not to talk of national sins and their just requital that I have selected this graphic picture for our study. It is rather to call attention to the fact that this same great law holds in relation to individuals as well as to nations; that men and women are only strong and safe when they are right and good; and though a man may do evil for awhile and prosper, yet an invisible adversary haunts his path, and if he does not repent ere long he will find himself in the lion's jaws, and if he escapes at all it will only be as a torn and wounded creature. This is a theme I wish to press home on your hearts with all the strength I have. Sin is never safe. It is always dangerous, forever under the disapprobation of God, and never fails to wound and tear and ruin the life. The most dangerous thing about some of you is that you have come to have a cheap and superficial idea about the peril of sin. Dr. Stalker, the Scotch preacher, was once staying with a Scotchman up in the Highlandsa fine old man, the chief man in the congregation. Dr. Stalker had. been preaching of sin, and as he walked home with the grand old Highlander, talking over the service, the man said: "Ay, sin! sin! I wish we had another name for that, because the word has become so common that the thing no longer pierces our conscience." I am afraid there are some of you who have come to the time when your consciences are seared so that you do not feel sensitively the approach of sin.