proper time through sloth? Have I always exerted myself to the full extent of my powers, or given in and failed to persevere in good resolutions?

Or under the seventh and last, Anger, ask yourself, Do I give way at all to passion and to angry words? Am I always ready to forgive others who offend me? or am I fretful, or sullen, or peevish under disappointment?

I merely instance these questions out of many others which one might ask oneself, in order to try to get you to stamp upon your consciences the certainty of how in many points you must own that you do sinthat is, that you fall short of the mark which you cannot but admit you should strive to aim at. For this is the one great sobering and steadying reflection that I would wish in the first instance to press upon you. It is nothing unreal or fanciful that I wish you to own to, it is the plain, simple truth of your real moral state that I wish each of you to recognise. If you find the indulgence of any one of these seven sins just mentioned pleasant, if you find the mere thought of such self-examination irksome, so that you are ready to exclaim with the Israelites, 'Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians,' that we may continue in our pleasant slavery-then, indeed, are you in deadly sin, and may Christ in His mercy deliver you therefrom.

But although all of you will not go quite so far as that, some will only allow, in a sort of half-hearted way, that they are more or less wrong, and have no intense inner resolve to be quit of the evil; others, however, I trust, will confess candidly that there are passions in them to be brought under-to be kept under-tempers to be bridled, sloth to be overcome, pride to be chastened and extirpated. You know, each one of you, if you know yourselves at all, that there is some side of your character which is simply irreconcilable with God and with your higher self. And as you look it in the face to-day you must say, as to a mortal foe in your grapple, 'Either you must die, or I must.' Oh, come to this deadly grapple with the evil, and never let go while the enemy continues to breathe. This is a hard saying, but which is better, to let your enemy entangle you in his grasp, or to help you to recognise your enemy by setting before you the sternness of the conflict, in order that you may feel the intense longing to be cleansed from your sin, the readiness to brave anything or bear anything at any cost, whatever the pain and whatever the effort -whatever the sacrifice may be, not to wince from it or flinch,-if at last thereby your soul may be made pure and clean as the airs of heaven blowing round us, bright as the very sunlight gleaming on the sea?

2. And so, passing on next to the second consideration I mentioned at the outset. When it has been branded into you by being repeatedly worsted in this contest that our own strength is nothing, that this. inborn spirit of evil is too strong for us to conquer alone-that though one day it may seem to be stricken down, yet another it is roused to greater violence than ever-when you have learnt by a very painful experience to feel that this sin is part of yourselves, and has its springs in the very source of our being, the question then arises, How can we be cleansed from our sin : we do indeed long for it more than aught else, but how-how can it be wrought in us?

Then it is that we turn to the gospel story, and find that 'forgiveness of sin' is the keynote of all Christ's life and work from beginning to end-from the beginning, when Zechariah sang of John Baptist that he was to go before the face of the Lord 'to give knowledge of salvation unto His people, by the remission of their sins,' down to the end when Christ, sitting at the Last Supper, said that 'His blood was being shed for many for the remission of their sins.' Our eyes must indeed be widely opened to our real condition before we can possibly value the peace that Christ can give us. But afterwards, when one has really become anxious about himself, and is thoroughly

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aware of his own evil nature, he then finds the very help that he needs when he is told that for him, weak and unworthy as he is, Christ came into the world, lived, taught, suffered, and laid down His life; and that for His sake pardon is ready to be issued to him the instant he has learned to feel his need of it. It is hard to put into words the vividness and freshness with which this truth then first flashes on the soul of man -Son, thy sins be forgiven thee!' sounds at first too good to be true: that all the while we were offending God and breaking His laws, He was not only caring for us, but actually should have given His only-begotten Son to save us and this for each one of us in particular :-that 'whosoever believeth in Him,' that is, trusts himself to God's infinite goodness and Christ's words, 'should have everlasting life.' For we cannot love anyone, not even God, unless we first trust Him as being worthy of our love; and to do that, we learn from listening to Christ as we can learn from no other teacher. This good news, when we receive it, banishes every lingering doubt and fear, confirms every faint and trembling hope in the heart of the penitent. We may have dreaded punishment and have thought that God was angry with us; we learn from Jesus that He pardons us freely; that God is not a Being to be appeased by the blood of victims,

but one who delights to reveal the law of right to man; and that all the sacrifice He requires is sorrow for sin, contrition of heart, and giving up of our own wills to Him, as the Son gave up His will to the Father.

That is it to which throughout all Christendom devout souls, during Lent especially, have been directing their thoughts, and will more earnestly than ever do so next Friday, the anniversary of His death; and that is the one thought which more than all others I would leave before the eyes of your minds this morning the thought of Christ's dying on the cross 'to cleanse you from your sin.' Try then quietly to have that sight engraven deep and with an everlasting impress on the soft tablets of your heart. There is something in the mere sight of any suffering that moves the heart. When we see another in any acute bodily or mental pain, we cannot but feel moved with some sympathy; and as we realise somewhat of the pain which Jesus suffered for our sakes, when He bowed that sacred head in death, we cannot but feel drawn towards Him, we cannot help being touched at the sight of His sufferings.

But there is here more than that; there is a power to cleanse us from our sins; for as we regard Jesus on the Cross we feel that the power of evil to