mission-by preventing us from making a positive choice of right in preference to wrong, and thus rendering us partakers in the guilt of that wrong.

And it will lead us to sins of omission-by making us dread to attempt what we believe to be our duty, lest in assuming the responsibility of choice we should in the end be proved to have been in error. The latter may seem the lesser evil of the two now; perhaps it will not appear to be so hereafter. Or rather they cannot be separated. That is the point which we are called upon to remember. "He that is not with Me is against Me." He that does not do all the good he can, does evil. He who does not decide for the right, decides for the wrong.

Choice! We cannot too often remind either ourselves, or those we attempt to guide, that it is a necessity; and that it only remains with ourselves to make it a duty. We laugh at children when they tell us they do not know what to choose,—they cannot tell which thing they like best. Perhaps we should act more wisely if we were to urge upon them the importance of choice. To know our own minds, as it is called, is often a very difficult task as we grow old; it might not be so if we had been trained to know them from our childhood. And it would surely be no slight acquisition; for to know our own minds, to understand what we wish, and why we wish; or why-as is often the case—we hold our wishes suspended; would through God's grace assist us to walk through life clearly

and steadfastly, to have a single heart, a single intention. It is a knowledge essential to a peaceful conscience, and inseparable from the highest aims of duty. When we compel ourselves to choose, however unimportant may be the matter in which choice is exercised, we are assisting ourselves in obtaining this clearness of spiritual insight. There are cases in which to know what we wish to choose may save us from sin in the actual choice. At all events, it will save us from the wretched infatuation of throwing the burden of our choice upon another, or of believing that because we will not openly take the part of the wicked, we are excused if we fail to take the part of the good; not seeing, or, if we do see, wilfully forgetting,-that, like Pilate in the act of making the lesser choice, we are in fact rendering ourselves responsible for the greater.

195

THE LUXURIES OF RELIGION.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 8.

"And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, because he had heard many things of Him: and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him."

THE various characters in Scripture are very strongly marked by the slightest touches. Pilate and Herod are so different, and yet each so true to the experience of human nature !

Herod at once shows himself to have advanced farther He has passed the Our Lord's miracles are nothing

than Pilate in

feeling of awe.

wickedness.

to him but a source of amusement, an exhibition as of the tricks of magic. "He hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him." So he would also have hoped to be interested by any strange phenomenon of nature, or any display of art. Many degrees of hardness of heart had he attained since the first rumours of the Redeemer's supernatural power reached him, and drew from him the exclamation, "This is John the Baptist-he is risen. from the dead." Conscience then was comparatively tender. The remembrance of his guilt was fresh in his mind. Possibly he might at that time

have been awakened to repentance; but he was a prince, living in luxury, surrounded by flatterers; the means of stifling conscience were ready at hand. Still yielding up himself to self-indulgence, he felt, but he did not act. And the Divine Teacher, who, if he had then sent for Him, might have "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," and in mercy have saved his soul, was never seen until time had gone by, and memory, perhaps, had become dulled, and conscience was deadened; and the rumour of a miracle, instead of arousing him to penitence and self-condemnation, was received but with the mocking curiosity of one who had exhausted all other sources of excitement.

The character of such a man seems far removed from the ordinary sinfulness of private life, in a country and a state of society like our own; but the steps towards its formation are easily taken. To see, and hear, and feel, without acting, that is the beginning.

And there are many shades of such a disposition to be found amongst us. Herod had no bitter enmity against our Lord. He appears to have been simply indifferent; only he would have made the exhibition of a sacred power the medium through which he indulged an excited curiosity. That sin, if we inquire deeply, will probably come home to us much more than we could at first imagine. What is it to make religion the cloke for the indulgence of our love of beauty or harmony? To attend

religious services, because we like the music ?to follow after celebrated preachers, because it gratifies curiosity?-to worship in particular churches, because the architecture approves itself to our taste? to read religious books, because they are talked about? to discuss religious subjects, because they happen to be the fashionable topics of the day? Doubtless there is pleasure and interest in all these things-a natural and, to a certain extent, an innocent pleasure; so, also, there must have been a pleasure, a very exciting and overpowering, and also innocent pleasure,-in witnessing our Lord's miracles, quite apart from any recognition of His Divinity. But the very possibility of a Divine interference with the laws of nature would, to a rightly constituted mind, have brought thoughts so awful, that any lesser feeling of interest would have been crushed by it; and if we,—Christians as we profess ourselves, the redeemed children of God, -really recognised the value of all things connected with religion, every thought of mere pleasure would at once be absorbed by the ever-present consciousness of the importance of the interests connected with it.

Sacred things must be treated sacredly; if they are not they become profane. And the fact that religion can and does minister to the gratification of our tastes is a reason why, when we discover in ourselves the existence of such tastes, we should sternly and rigidly set a watch over our hearts, and keep a guard over our lives, lest the beauty which