responsibilities. It is not ministers, city missionaries, Bible-women, or any other paid people that can do the work. It is to be by Christian men and by Christian women, and if I might use a very vulgar distinction, which has a meaning in the present connection, very specially by Christian ladies, taking their part in the work amongst the degraded and the outcasts, that our sorest difficulties and problems will be solved. If a church does not face these, well! all I can say is, it will go spark out; and the sooner the better. "If thou forbear to deliver them that are appointed to death, and say, Behold! I knew it not, shall not He that weigheth the hearts consider it, and shall He not render to every man according to his work?" And, on the other hand, there are no blessings more rich, select, sweet, and abiding than are to be found in sharing the sorrow of the Man of Sorrows, and carrying the message of His pity and His redemption to an outcast world. "If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, the Lord shall satisfy thy soul; and thou shalt be as a watered garden, and as a spring of water whose waters fail not."

XXVII.

One Saying from Three Men.

"THE wicked hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved."PSALM X. 6.

"Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved."-PSALM xvi. 8.

"And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved."-PSALM

xxx. 6.

Here

OW differently the same things sound
when said by different men!
are three people giving utterance to
almost the same sentiment of confi-

dence. A wicked man says it, and it is insane presumption and defiance. A good man says it, having been lulled into false security by easy times, and it is a mistake that needs chastisement. A humble believing soul says it, and it is the expression of a certain and blessed truth. "The wicked saith in his heart, I shall not be moved." A good man, led astray by his prosperity, said, "I shall not be moved," and the last of the three puts a little clause in which makes all the difference, "because He is at my right hand, I shall never be moved." So, then, we have the mad arrogance of godless confidence, the mistake of a good man that needs correction, and the warranted confidence of a believing soul.

I. The mad arrogance of godless confidence.

The “wicked” man, in the psalm from which our first text comes, said a good many wrong things "in his heart." The tacit assumptions on which a life is based, though they may never come to consciousness and still less to utterance, are the really important things. I daresay this "wicked man" was a good Jew with his lips, and said his prayers all properly, but in his heart he had two working beliefs. One is thus expressed: "As for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved." The other is put into words thus: "He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten, He hideth His face, He will never see it."

That is to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either "There is no God," or He does not care what I do, and I am safe to go on for evermore in the present fashion." It might seem as if a man, with the facts of human life before him, could not, even in the insanest arrogance, say," I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity." But we have an awful power-and the facts that we can exercise, and choose to exercise, are among the strange riddles of our enigmatical existence and charactersof ignoring unwelcome facts, and going cheerily on as though we had annihilated them, because we do not reflect upon them. So this man, in the midst of a world in which there is no stay, and whilst he saw all around him the most startling and tragical instances of sudden change and complete collapse, stands quietly

and says, "Ah! I shall never be moved"; "God doth not require it."

That absurdity is the basis of every life that is not a life of consecration and devotion-so far as it has a basis of conviction at all. The "wicked" man's true faith is this, absurd as it may sound when you drag it out into clear distinct utterance, whatever may be his professions. I wonder if there are any of us whose life can only be acquitted of being utterly unreasorable and ridiculous, by the assumption "I shall never be moved."

Have you a lease of your goods? Do you think you are tenants at will or owners? Which? Is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all others? If there is not, what about the sanity of a man whose whole life is built upon a blunder? He is convicted of the grossest folly, unless he is assured that either there is no God, or that He does not care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of a continuance in our present

state.

I

Do you say in your heart, "I shall never be moved"? Then you must be strong enough to resist. every tempest that beats against you. Is that so? shall never be moved." Then nothing that contributes to your well-being will ever slip from your grasp, but you will always be able to hold it tight. Is that so? "I shall never be moved." Then there is no grave waiting for you. Is that so? Unless these three assumptions are warranted, every godless man is making a hideous blunder, and his character is in the sentence pronounced by the loving lips of incarnate Truth on

the rich man who thought that he had "much goods laid up for many years," and had only to be merry— "Thou fool! Thou fool!"

If an engineer builds a bridge across a river without due calculation of the force of the winds that blow down the gorge, the bridge will be at the bottom of the stream some stormy night, and the train piled on the fragments of it in hideous ruin. And with equal certainty the end of the first utterer of this speech can be calculated, and is foretold in the psalm, "The Lord is King for ever and ever. The godless are perished out of the land.”

II. We have in our second text the mistake of a good man who has been lulled into false confidence.

The Psalmist admits his error by the acknowledgment that he spoke "in my prosperity"; or, as the word might be rendered, "in my security." This suggests to us the mistake into which even good men, lulled by the quiet continuance of peaceful days, are certain to fall, unless continual watchfulness be exercised by them.

It is a very significant fact that the word which is translated in our Authorized Version "prosperity" is often rendered" security," meaning thereby, not safety but a belief that I am safe. A man who is prosperous, or at ease, is sure to drop into the notion that “tomorrow will be as this day, and much more abundant," unless he keeps up unslumbering watchfulness against the insidious illusion of permanence. If he yields to the temptation, in his foolish security forgetting how fragile are its foundations, and what a host of enemies surround him, threatening it, then there is nothing for it but that the merciful discipline, which