in doubt and fear of ourselves: knowing how worldworn, how cold and indevout we are; and remembering times when surely it was better with us!

But though these things be true, and though our Saviour bids us watch and pray, it is not His will that any of His children be overwhelmed with anxiety for what is coming, either in Providence or in Grace. If we trust in Him, and do our own best, He will provide: He will bear us through. All His ways are right: and we acquiesce with humble submission in that divine decree, which appointed that you and I should go forth to bear the burden and heat of life's little day, and to share in the turmoil and strife of life's ceaseless battle: instead of being, as we might have been, rapt away while we were little children yet; and spared all that toil and temptation and pain; and taken to the full and passionless rest in that happy place whose population gathers within it untold millions, who never knew in this world more of the mortal life, than comes within the brief experience of early childhood. I suppose that most of us have outgrown ambition, whether temporal or spiritual: Rest, and purity, and safety, are our main desire : the lowliest place in heaven will do; and it suffices that we be numbered among "the least of all saints." Yet let those remember who would be stimulated by the remembrance, that the highest and happiest places where all are high and happy, are promised. to those who fight their way to heaven in the face of

temptation and opposition, as all save those who pass in infancy must. It is to "him that overcometh," that Christ has promised the best things: promised them over and over. Little do we understand His words: but they fall on our ear like music that means much, and tells it sweetly:

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne."

Not in His Throne, but at His pierced feet, it will suffice abundantly if we are suffered to sit down!

XII.

CONTENTMENT.

"For I have learned, in whatsover state I am, therewith to be content."-PHILIPP. iv. II.

VERY eminent preacher, preaching the other day

A eminent prescocia

before a scientific association, is reported to have declared, broadly, that the great purpose of Religion is not to prepare human beings for entering into another world, but rather to fit them for their work in this world. I think it wiser to put aside such a comparison; and to say (which is beyond question true) that the Christian religion does not merely provide for our happiness in the world beyond the grave; it provides also for our peace on the way thither. And thinking of this last, we may well give some thought to the pleasantly-sounding text in which the great Apostle Paul tells us the temper in which he had come to look upon all worldly matters. "I have learned," he says, "in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

He had learned it, he tells us: and this seems to imply that it had taken him some time to come to it.

He had learned it; and the way in which he speaks seems to imply that it had not been a very easy lesson, and that at one time in his life he had been inclined to be of a very different way of thinking. I suppose that once St Paul was like most of us,—apt to murmur and complain at the cross-events and troubles of this life; apt to think less of the many things God gives than of the few things God denies; apt to forget how many things go right with us, thinking of the lesser number that go wrong. I suppose St Paul was once like many men; conceited enough to think he deserved something better than he had got: readier to think of the comparatively few who are better off, than of the far greater number who are worse off. But St Paul tells us in the text, that as he had grown older, he had grown wiser: that when he thought longer on the matter, he had come to think very differently from what he had done at first: that the result of all his experience of life had been to make him conclude that things after all were better in God's hands than they would have been in his: that perhaps God knew better than he did who ought to be rich and who ought to be poor: that perhaps after all it was just as well that hunger and cold and nakedness should have been his appointed lot, while others were clad in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. And even if he were not able quite to see the Why and Wherefore of all God's arrangements as to his own lot, and as to the lot of others; still when he came

to know God better, he had such perfect confidence in God's kindness and wisdom, that he could not even wish for one minute that things should have turned out otherwise than as his Saviour had decreed. And so, as he looked round him, upon his poor earthly lot: Paul the captive now, Paul the aged, Paul the lonely man, with no pleasant family-circle to surround his fireside, Paul who had known such perils, such labours, such sufferings,-scourgings, buffetings and contempt, ―he tells us that now by God's good grace he had been brought to this, that he could put up with even worse things than these ; yea, that he had "learned, in whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content!"

Now perhaps there is not one of us here who is not as free from worldly hardships as St Paul was: and surely if that great and good man managed to be content in his poor lot, we may well seek to be so in ours. The same grace that taught him, and helped him, is ready to teach and help us. And when we remember how besetting a sin discontent is: when we think what a faithless, ungrateful, undutiful thing towards our kind Father in heaven it is to be discontented: when we think how happy a Christian might be, with all his good hope for another world, if he could be heartily content with his lot in this surely it will be good and right for once to turn our minds seriously to this subject, praying that God's Spirit may make all that shall be said about it profitable to every one here. I shall try to show you the reasons which may