peculiarly dangerous. They are so for this reason; -the habit of neglect is one which is peculiarly apt to grow. The conscience more readily overlooks omissions than it does transgressions, and on that account the habit is more apt to steal upon us, and master us before we are aware. As we have seen already, not to do what is right is often as bad as to do what is wrong; but somehow we do not discern the evil so directly and immediately in the one case as in the other. A little reflection reveals it; but we do not discern it so directly and immediately. We can remain quietly in indolence-quietly and self-complacently,—when our conscience would speak out were we going astray. Non-activity in good does not present itself to our thoughts as sinful with the same vividness and force with which activity in evil does so. You would not positively teach your neighbour an evil lesson-your conscience would not let you do that; but, without much compunction, you can suffer him to remain in evil and darkness when you might, if you pleased, do something to deliver him from them. The priest would not have struck the traveller a blow, nor have taken his purse or his raiment; but he could let him lie and die by the roadside. Many a man would not, for the world,

cheat his neighbour to the extent of even a single farthing; but yet he can withhold charity,—that does not seem so great a sin. You would not scoff; -no; but you may omit worship. You would not mock at sacred things;-no;—but you may spend days and weeks without bestowing a serious thought upon them. Now, just because the wrongness of such omissions does not strike the conscience so forcibly, the peril arising from them is all the greater. They are sins which are all the more dangerous, because they can be persevered in with fewer checks. For, beyond doubt, less though we may feel their heinousness, they are just as able to destroy the soul as any other kind of sins whatever. One can destroy his soul very effectually just by taking no means to save it. There are enough of evil influences in the world to work its destruction very thoroughly if one just takes no precautions against them. It only needs negligence, and the weeds will grow fast enough in the soil of the human heart. It only needs that we go to sleep, and the enemy will sow the tares.

The children of Israel, when encamped at the foot of Sinai, were told that no one must pass the barrier which was set around the Mount, else he would be thrust through. This might be taken as a

type of the punishment of transgression. But go back in their history a little farther. Go back to the memorable night of the first passover, when they were told to sprinkle blood upon their lintels and door-posts, and the destroying angel, who was to smite the first-born in every household of Egypt, would pass their houses over, and leave them, and their children, and their cattle, in safety. Suppose that any one had omitted to sprinkle the blood upon his lintel and his door-posts, would not omission have been as fatal upon this occasion as transgression upon the other? Depend upon it, no man can take a more certain plan to bring destruction upon his own soul than just to do nothing to insure its salvation. Just go quietly to bed without the blood upon the door-posts, and, in point of fact, you are simply inviting the angel of death.

So, then, let us consider these things, and, though it is matter of thankfulness if we have been kept back by God's restraining grace from flagrant wickedness of a positive and open kind, let us not be content with a Christian profession which is unaccompanied with zeal for God, the use of God's ordinances, and such amount of Christian work as may fall within our opportunities.

VIII.

CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE.

1 CORINTHIANS iii. 21, 22, 23-"All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."

THERE is then a possibility of gaining the whole world and yet not losing one's own soul. Nay, it is only through the care of the soul that the world can be gained in any true sense. For it was only in so far as the brethren at Corinth were sincere followers of the Lord Jesus, seeking through Him to live to God, that St. Paul could say to them, as he has done, "All things are yours."

It is hardly necessary to explain that the sense in which the Apostle here speaks of the Christian's property in all things is a moral one. They are his, because, under the blessing and according to the plan of God, they may be, and are intended to be, conducive to the highest interests of his spiritual life. Of those whose affections are centred on the things of time,

one might far more truly say that they belong to the world, than that it belongs to them. For they are the slaves of their own possessions, whom these possessions rule, and in whom they crush down with cruel hand whatever is best and worthiest, whatever is generous and divine. It is when one can use, and habitually seeks to use, God's earthly gifts and dispensations towards those nobler and more permanent than earthly objects for which God designs them, that he is truly the master of his own circumstances, able, by that help which he enjoys from above, to compel good out of them all.

In a similar sense, not the world only, and life, and things present, but death also, and things to come, are the property of him who is joint-heir with Christ of the great inheritance provided for God's children. Death is his; for, through the hope which his Saviour enables him to cherish, he learns to regard it no longer as an enemy from whom there is no escape, but as a messenger of peace sent to convey him home.

to come, the glories which are at hand for evermore,- -are his also.

And things

God's right

The Apostle

does not say they will be his, but they are his now. Too many of us are living at such a distance from God that we are unable fully to realise this part of