humility. The habitual attitude of his soul was an attitude of dependence. In all things he leaned upon the arm of Omnipotence. This was the secret of his strength. And so will it be with all that serve God in truth. None can serve him truly, save those who serve Him in His own strength.

We therefore invite you to contemplate the godly man of business as in the midst of all his occupations, whether secular or spiritual, distrusting and renouncing his own strength, and recognising and relying on the strength of his Saviour, laying hold on that strength continually by the hand of prayer. God grant to us the presence and power of His Spirit, that we may be strengthened with might in the inner man, through the instruction of His holy Word!

Human power depends largely on human confidence. The man possessed of a certain iron inflexibility of purpose, based on a proud self-reliance, is the man who ordinarily accomplishes great things in the affairs of earth. Marvellous is the mastery of such a will over weaker and inferior wills. So that for a man whose highest aim is present success, there cannot be a better rule than, "Rely upon yourself, have confidence in your own judgment, never despair of your own efforts." God often allows men of this character to succeed. They have their reward. In self they have confided, and

to self they give the praise. But the very converse holds in relation to the strength of those who live not to themselves but to the Lord, who live not the life of sense but the life of faith. Just in proportion as they distrust themselves, abandon self, and abide in Christ, just in such proportion will His strength be made perfect in their weakness, and will they "be more than conquerors through Him that loved them." The curse of man is, that he makes flesh his arm—that he has lost his trust in the living God. How intense this idolatrous tendency, this suicidal fatuity in the heart of man! So intense, that men naturally confide in any thing or every thing rather than in Him in whom they "live, and move, and have their being." A virtual atheism is practically the state of all who have not been born again of the Spirit. "God is not in all their thoughts;" they plan without consulting Him, labour without leaning upon Him, prosper without acknowledging Him. Man must be brought off from this self-dependence before he can be brought into that dependence on God, which is the law of his nature, and the condition of his perfection. By trusting to the creature he fell from his Creator; by renouncing faith in the creature he returns to his Creator. To reduce him to despair of his own power, is a task so difficult that God alone can bring it to pass. Men will more easily admit that they have done

wrong, that they are guilty before God, than that they cannot return of themselves to the Lord, that they have no power of themselves to help themselves. This is an admission which their pride cannot brook. So prevalent indeed is the notion of self-sufficiency, that most men intend to turn to God and prepare for eternity at some future period. It never occurs to them to misgive their ability to do so whenever they shall please. Strange, that they should be deaf alike to the testimony of Scripture and to the lessons of experience on the subject of man's spiritual impotency! Hearken to the voice of the lively oracles. "Without me," says Christ, "ye can do nothing." "We are not sufficient of ourselves," says St. Paul, "to think any thing as of ourselves." "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." "When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." And clear as is the witness of Scripture on this point, no less clear is the confession of every orthodox branch of the Christian church. Our own church is most explicit. In her tenth Article she says:-" The condition of man since the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant

and acceptable unto God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will." The work of Christ for us was not more indispensable to our salvation, than is the work of Christ in us. If we are justified wholly by his merit, we are sanctified absolutely by his grace.

The evidence of experience fully sustains the testimony of Scripture. Let any man set about becoming what he feels he ought to be; let him strive to be perfectly upright in all his thoughts and intentions, perfectly accurate in all his words, perfectly kind and charitable in all his feelings, perfectly submissive and devout in all his sentiments towards God. Let him make a conscience of every thing within him as well as without himof the issues of his heart, no less than of the streams of his life; let him struggle to make himself love God with all his heart, soul, and strength, and to love his neighbour as himself; let him do all this with ever so much honesty of purpose and determination of spirit—and what will be the inevitable result? He will discover more and more painfully the depth of his impotency and the abortiveness of his efforts. Nay, more--he will find that his inherent corruptions gather intensity from the very resistance which

he opposes to them; as the current chafes against the barrier which interrupts, but cannot check, its course.

A man may, indeed, by his own power, greatly control his external conduct: he may cease to be a drunkard, or he may abstain from impure indulgences; but without Christ he can do nothing in the spiritual life—he cannot give birth to a holy desire, or a good counsel, or a just work. Mere morality, what is visible to man, can grow on the stem of nature; but "the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God," these can be borne only by the tree of grace.

Hence it happens that you will frequently find a man, gifted with uncommon resolution in the things of this life, who is yet like a straw tossed in the eddies of a stream in relation to the things of God. In the world, a rock; in the church, “a wave of the sea tossed of the wind, and driven." What energy in natural things will the same individual sometimes display, who in spiritual things is the slave of passion and the sport of caprice-led captive at his will by "the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience!" How mournfully manifest, then, that a moral paralysis has passed upon the spiritual powers of man! How essential