fulness and purity and generosity. We look at them and admire them, but dismiss them as impossible, and put in their place lower, but more workable, ones. This is the fundamental error. Men really live by their ideals. The instant they begin to conform their ideal holiness to their practical attainment, they start upon a downward course, and there is no place to stop until they reach the bottom. One must hold steadfastly before him the ideals which God

sets.

The second principle is one equally important, but one which is likely to be forgotten; we dare not condemn the things which God does not condemn. The religious world has more than once fallen into the error of pronouncing unpardonable, things which God regards as indifferent, or at least not intrinsically wrong. We can all recall instances where the Church has set its ban upon beliefs, practices, and amusements, sweeping them all together into one comprehensive condemnation, whereas they are things which God does not so dismiss from His presence.

With these two principles in mind, let us examine a single word of our text upon which the whole discussion turns. It is the word "friendship." We may congratulate ourselves that there is no term in the English language by which we can literally translate the term used in the original. 66 Friendship" with the world, we call it. The French would call it une liaison. It is the

illicit friendship of the married wife for a man

who is not her husband.

bride, the Lamb's wife.

The Church is the

Her husband is not

exacting or jealous of any innocent affection, but he condemns unsparingly and without relief her illicit affection for the world.

XXVIII.

RESTORE SUCH AN ONE.

“Bretbren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meek= ness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."-GALATIANS Vi. 1-2.

THERE are three principles evidently deducible from this text: that sin is not always premeditated-we may be overtaken and overthrown by a sin as by a robber; that a sinner is always capable of restoration to purity; and that it rests with his brethren to help him to effect this restoration. It would be a blessed thing for our Christian society if we could look upon sin and sinners as Christ did. We are prone to go to one of two extremes. We either look upon the sinner as hopeless, or look upon the sin as trivial. The divine character of the New Testament is in no way more evident than in the stable ground from which it views this matter.

It says, never retracting nor modifying, "the wages of sin is death." It speaks the truth sternly and with no weak sentiment. But then it looks for every excuse, admits every pallia

tion. It accepts the existence of sin as a fact, without affecting to be shocked or startledlooks upon it as a disease which should be, and which can be, cured.

The Apostle speaks of some sins as the result of a surprise-"if a man be overtaken by a fault." All sins are not of this character, nor does he say so; but some are. It seems as if it were not

in us to commit them. We loathe the thought of them, and generally they are no temptation to us. They are, so to speak, unnatural to us. You were going along quietly on your way, thinking no evil, when suddenly a temptation for which you were not prepared presented itself, and before you knew where you were, you were crying over your fault. It is unpleasant to think this-that we walk so insecurely; yet anyone who knows humanity knows that it is true, that it may befall even a brave man and a true. Everyone, if he thinks a moment, will recognize the truth of this in his own life.

Again, the Apostle looks upon sin not as something which has come and gone again, and left no mark. He sees in it a thing that leaves a burden on the soul. One burden is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag us down to fresh sins. The punishment of sin is sin! The penalty of a crime is that it leads to the commission of another. The soul gravitates downward under its burden, It was a profound knowledge which foretold Peter's sin. He did

not say, "Thou shalt deny me," that would have been simple enough; but He says, "Thou shalt deny me thrice,"-thrice; he could not stop at once. The distress of the soul does not depend upon the magnitude of the fault. It depends on the soul itself. What would be a most conspicuous blot on the fair white page would be undistinguishable on the smeared blotter. Every soul bears its own sin, and the remembrance of a lie is more intolerable to one than the remembrance of murder to another. But the memory of sin is what hurts. Many a spirit which might have climbed the heights of holiness, and breathed the rare and difficult air of the mountain-top, where none but the purest spirituality can dwell, is weighted down by such a burden to the level of the lowest. Every aspiration of such a one, every longing after holiness, is met and stifled by the remembrance. We meet such often, men and women whose whole lives are spent in doing deeds of charity and love in secret and in darkness, lest their outward acts of goodness should seem inconsistent with their inward memory of sin.

Our Lord went through the world detecting the presence of evil by the innate purity of His nature. Men, supposed spotless, fell down before Him, crying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." This, in a lower degree, is true of all innocence. Men grown gray in guilt restrain their hands and tongues before a man they