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Another advantage arising from this more candid view of self is, the very direct encouragement that we receive from the consciousness that we have done what is pleasing to GOD. Of course, in saying that, I do not mean that we can perform any act intrinsically holy, or without many infirmities and shadows; nevertheless, if there be anything, except the merest conventionalism in a man's saying, that peace and happiness will follow on doing what is right, and uneasiness and misery on doing what is wrong, the consciousness of having done the good act, and the feeling that we have, in this or that respect, pleased God, gives us an increased alacrity in the effort to go on pleasing Him, destroying the impression of the "austere man," and confirming that of His being One Who will to the ten talents give the ten cities for reward.

We know it well in our intercourse with our fellow-creature that nothing so encourages in the effort to please as the fact of having pleased; nothing so discourages as the consciousness of not having given satisfaction, or, what is worse, the impression that we have dissatisfied. Without this view all those passages fall to the ground, which speak of overcoming the evil one, and issuing from the storm of temptation unscathed, but with this view each one

of them reminds us of heights gained in the hill country over which we travelled to Jerusalem, and clear advance is made on the heavenly road.

How happy it is! how encouraging for a man to say at the end of the day or at the end of the week, "I have succeeded in this conflict or that, I have done what I could, I have offered to CHRIST the tears of penitence for the past; the alabaster box of holy resolution for the future. I may hope then that He has said, Thy sins are forgiven thee, at least, those of which I repented, and on account of which I have formed the better resolution, and I will to-morrow go on my way in peace.

Spiritual progress is gained by repentance for the past. With the blotting out of sins gone by comes an energetic future. We start afresh. To-morrow is everything when once yesterday has become nothing; but if yesterday tread on the heels of to-morrow, as an avenger of blood, that to-morrow must be a sad one. In the vessel in which we sail, and in the sea over which we go, we must ever look to the land of the morning, to the sunrise in the East, and the angel forms which glance and hover there. The shadows and ghosts which troop along the twilight beach of yester even

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ing beckon us only to despair, call us back again to follow their melancholy hordes into the realms of darkness. Satan marshals them. JESUS stands in the sunlight before us, and bids us come to Him, and He will give us rest. When Mary Magdalene heard she was forgiven, the past forgotten, she never left our LORD; when the blind man received his sight, he followed JESUS in the way. The declaration of Absolution has from the earliest days of the Church been the liberation from the thrall of sin. With this view is inseparably mixed up the humble and honest recognition of works done to God's glory. No man can ever be consciously free who refuses to recognize it; if he do refuse to own its truth, it is equivalent to the declaration that he prays for what he can never get, and grasps through life at what must always be a shadow. It may be objected to all this that such a character will be vain, self-righteous or proud; far from it! The simplicity of a child and humility unrivalled belonged to Nehemiah. No man appears more vain and self-righteous than he who continually boasting of his sinfulness in every particular, either proclaims the grace of God a failure, or himself a hypocrite.

LXVII.

NAAMAN.

COMPROMISE.

2 KINGS V. 1.

"Now NAAMAN, CAPTAIN OF THE HOST OF THE KING OF SYRIA, WAS A GREAT MAN WITH HIS MASTER, AND HONOURABLE, BECAUSE BY HIM THE LORD HAD GIVEN DELIVERANCE UNTO SYRIA: HE WAS ALSO A MIGHTY MAN OF VALOUR, BUT HE WAS A LEPER."

1. THE character of Naaman interests and pleases, but at the same time perplexes us. There is a great natural beauty about it, and its faults are quite consistent with a character that might be admired by the better portion of mankind. He was a warrior, and remarkable for his valour; like all soldiers he had a considerable amount of singlemindedness; listened at once to the advice of the little Hebrew maid, and determined to seek a remedy for his sore disease by a reference to a supernatural power. He was willing to accept the advice of a prophet

living amongst a hostile people, and at once equipped his expedition for the abode of Elisha the prophet of Israel.

His character is consistent with his position when he showed his quick obedience to the recommendation of his slave, as in his easy reliance on any power which professed agency with the invisible world. Having reached the house of Elisha he was at once offended by the recommendation of the Jordan. The mighty and successful Syrian warrior could brook the idea of seeking the religious ascetic, in the midst of the valleys of Samaria, for he belonged to another kingdom than that of the conquered Israelites, and his voice spoke the accents of other realms than those that were peopled by the bondman and the serf. Elisha's words to Naaman were of heaven or of hell, and either were able to allay the power of the devil, or to summon the administration of angels. The resort in such an extremity to a man so independent of the more humbling associations of his people was not derogatory to the pride of the soldier, but to recognise a dignity and virtuous efficacy in the humble stream which watered the conquered lands of the despised Israelite, the river whose associations at once

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