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evil "the world, the flesh and the devil," if, in the presence of these considerations and under the pressure of these motives, you still regard the inquiry as one of little moment.

But I am persuaded better things of you.

"Life is real, life is earnest

And the grave is not its goal,
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."

Voices from the past, from the present, from the future; voices from within, from without; voices from time, from eternity; voices from the great deeps, from the everlasting heights; are harmoniously attesting its destiny deciding import.

Enter upon it. Enter upon it.

CHAPTER II.

SIN.

"Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins." The Saviour implies the sinner. Salvation presupposes sin. Without it both would be meaningless. Let us briefly consider it for it is one of the awful facts of the universe. It has entered our fair world. It is in each life. Its blasting presence is everywhere. But for it, what need of inquiring about God's way of salvation.

What is it? To this many answers have been given from philosophical as well as from moral and religious view points. I recall the following declaration regarding life in an old text-book, "What life is we know not. What life does we know well." The remark might be applied to sin, judging by the theories in reference to it.

But for our present purpose and your need take the following brief but comprehensive statement. "Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God."

We may look at the matter at first in a some

what apparently cold, logical and historical fashion, so as to judge from the facts how you are to be classified. Having done so we must then come to closer quarters as becometh inquirers and an inquiry related to the great things of life, death and immortality. And my hope is that the examination will set you forward in, or, at least, truly toward the pathway of life.

Well then how is it with you from the standpoint of a defective conformity to the law of God? There are sins of omission as well as of commission. God's children, under the guidance of the Spirit, pray for forgiveness not only for what they do which is contrary to the will of God, but also for what they fail in being and doing according to His requirements.

And this is true in all our earthly relations as well. In all of these there is the reign of lawalbeit it may be and ought to be the law of love. And that law, whatever its expression, requires full consecration of the whole being from those who are living under it-be it the relation and law of friendship, or that of the citizen, or of the closer relations and intimacies of the family life. In all of these the demand is that we rise up to the full measure of that ideal—the pattern of which was shown in the mount of God. Failing in this we are not what the law contemplates we should

be. Its majesty is offended. And if provision be not made in some way by which your defect can be reconciled with the perfect maintenance of its majesty, then you will be the one to suffer for failure to reach up to and move companionably with it along the high plane where it lives and moves and has its being. And, for the present, we are not taking into consideration any such provision. You are to stand in your own strength in rigid relation to the laws of whatever sphere you occupy. And any failure to rise to the perfect measure of the law of that sphere will be an offence to it. It will resent it. You have not perfectly conformed yourself to the law of the realm of friendship, of citizenship, of parental, marital, or filial responsibility, as the case may be. You are, therefore, in relation thereto, a sinner from defect, from omission, from a want of conformity.

As a child you may possibly be able to say in reference to parental law, "Neither at any time transgressed I thy commandment," while yet the fact may remain that in disposition, thought, purpose, effort, you have fallen short of a universal, unfailing, and generous surrender of yourself, as was meet, to the loving furtherance of all domestic interests. Times there were when conduct was influenced by a cold, calculating prudence, which, while not stopping short of the bald, literal re

quirements of duty, yet did not overleap them in deference to the spirit of an obedience rendered in love. While actual transgression may not be charged up against you, yet clearly you are not conformed in heart, in all the elements of your being, to the law which should govern your filial relationship.

Similarly as between husband and wife may there be witnessed a fulfillment of obligations which, after a fashion, entitles each to mutually deny the charge of transgression, while yet there is all along a woeful absence of conformity to the spirit of the law which should govern their relation.

And this results in the neutralizing of that sweet fellowship that would otherwise be. The place thereof is usurped or supplanted by a painful consciousness of wounded sensibilities. Duties are decorously attended to from day to day. But they are only so many automatic movements out of which the soul of music has fled. Fulfilled, possibly, with scrupulous fidelity, the family life. has yet become a formal routine, from the cold respectability of which love has taken its flight to more genial climes.

"The harp that once through Tara's halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls

As if that soul were fled."

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