The loss be Satan's; thine be the eternal gain. You see now, what you perceived not before, that this sin, this leading sin in our soul, is to your nature what the devil is to earth and hell,- the rallying-point and support of all sin; the great centre to which all the evil of your carnal nature has been tending; where it has been recruited, and from which it has been impelled throughout spirit, soul and body. The strength of sin has been thereabouts, as the strength of Samson in his hair. I have no particular theory on the subject; no hobby-idea to prove or support. Your experience is suggestive, merely. Why did you not detect it before? The name of sin is legion. The commander-in-chief was lost in the crowd. You did not study yourself. You were a creature of circumstances, borne along on the current of events, without soundings, careless whether the water was salt or fresh, or what hand was at the helm. It is a miracle you are not in hell. Perhaps, chameleon-like, it has deluded you by its changes of color, aspects and positions. I knew a deeply pious man who was puzzled for years to know which of three leading tendencies of his nature was the king-sin. Sometimes he suspected the changes arose from different sorts of devils tempting him at different times. He could always tell, as he expressed it, when there was going to be "a change of wind," as he termed it, the annoying influence about to blow from another point of his spiritual compass.

It is well you now understand. Providence has been warring against you on the account of this ring-leading sin. So has the Spirit of God; so has conscience; so have your reason and understanding; so have faith, law and Gospel, and the ministers of the sanctuary; -for the preached word has been against you, always like Micaiah the prophet to Ahab, never prophesying good concerning

thee, but evil!-therefore you have hated it.-1 Kings 22: 8.

If you yield to it any more, you will have trouble. The wise men of Troy, you remember, advised Priam to send back Helen to the Grecians, and not to allow himself to be captivated by her fascinations, as it was likely she would be the cause of a fatal war. Hear me, then, O thou "Inquirer," dismiss from thy soul this bosom sin; away with it to the devil, to whom it belongs! I urge no divorce. The union between thy soul and it was never lawful. God never joined thee and that sin together. "Away with it! away with it! Crucify it! crucify it!" Words like these were once unrighteously flung against thy innocent Saviour; fling them righteously against this bosom-sin. Anything to get rid of it. It will bring on against thy soul and body a more terribly fatal war than ever Helen brought upon ancient Troy. The King of Syria commanded his army not to fight with small nor great, but against the King of Israel only. A strange and unheard-of order; but it was obeyed. There was wisdom and foresight in the Syrian king. When the King of Israel fell, fatally wounded, the battle was ended; victory was achieved.

Direct all your force against this king-sin. "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter," saith thy Lord. Win the victory in its death, and all its troops and allies will soon be overcome.

How great will be the peace and joy of thy soul, then! How great the satisfaction of heaven! There will be joy in heaven.

Have you not read of Mithridates, the implacable enemy of the Romans? What joy in the Roman capital when news arrived that he was slain ! What feasts were made! what sacrifices to the gods! Why all this stir for the death

of one? Because they counted that as good as an army of men were slain in his single death. It is thus I would have you view the destruction of this beast and devil in thy soul. Austin cried out, "Lord, deliver me from myself!" Rather pray, "Lord, deliver me from this part of myself!" 0, come, now, bring out this Agag, and let him be hewn in pieces before the Lord. Open thy breast, O man, and pray God to send a bullet that may be the death of it!

Let me shout in thy ears! let me thrill thy very being with the war-cry of a spiritual hero, before he left the battle-field of the church, for glory! Hear him, to one like yourself, "O make an onset! run the sword of the Spirit to the hilt in the blood of thy sins! Stab thy heart-lusts to the heart with the knife of mortification! Fight a duel every day with inbred sin, and you will have Christ for your second!" Every day a duel with inbred sin? Nay, blessed be God! Hear me, every one of you who are troubled with the plague of the heart,— you may all have victory this hour. One duel ought to be enough for a lifetime. You all have had many duels with sin. Some of you have received more wounds than you have given; but none of them have been fatal. Thank God for that! You have fared better than many a duellist with sin, who is dead, buried and damned. Come on! this may be your last one, and victory. I know you cannot do this alone of yourself. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" is a Bible illustration on the subject. He spoke well who said, a man might as well try to shake off the skin of his body as the sin of his soul,- that is, without divine influence; but this is ever near to assist all who fight against sin. I like the duel idea. That writer did not make a vain pledge of Jesus being your second. Fight this duel, then, this hour! Jesus will stand by you.

J

There is no law in heaven above or earth beneath to condemn you. If you are victorious and shall slay your antagonist, you may fear no police. Hell-fiends only are against you. Be it so; that is to be expected. ing to fear from them. Your cause is good. Jesus is ready; he is by your side now.

You have noth

Begin at once. Hear his voice:

Math. 21: 22,-"And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, BELIEVING, ye shall receive." This is your weapon; sin and hell shall fly before it. Seize it; lay hold of it now, like a man! Christ is by your side to make it victorious. Talk not of swords, pistols or revolvers ; this surpasses them all. "And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."-1 John 5: 4. That is but the jewelled hilt of the sword,-"All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." But, to use an idea of Willis, it is "the jewelled hilt whose diamonds light the passage of the blade." Have faith, then, in the will, power, strength, presence and veracity, of Jesus, and this shall be the hour when that old serpent-sin shall die that has stung you so often with his temptation;ay, and every sin, the whole "body of sin," shall be destroyed. Some say, if the Pope were destroyed, and his power as a secular prince were annihilated, the Roman Catholic church would necessarily crumble to pieces and become extinct; which others question. Hearken! The same power which shall destroy this prince-sin of your soul is able, willing, ready to overthrow and extirpate all his subjects within you, and annihilate all the power of the enemy.

Victory is yours, if you only perform the conditions,"BELIEVE." But you will ask, "What am I to believe?" Believe that Jesus will keep his word of promise to you; that if you believe that you receive, you shall receive.

Offer yourself wholly to the Lord. Renounce the devil, and that besetting sin, and every sin, heartily and energetically, for he never saves "the passive soul antagonist to nothing." No! but you must be antagonist to the devil and all his works, within you and without you! Desire victory; that is, full salvation from its power and presence within. Pray that thus it may be unto you. Offer the blood of the Lamb as the full equivalent, the New Testament price, the infinite price, for the salvation which is of infinite value. Let desire reach its highest point of intensity. What next? Anything more? Yes, surely; for, if you stop here, you leave off just where you began ; - you are little the better for the effort, no nearer the blessing; abandon the effort, and you will diverge wider and wider from it. What is to be done? Hearken; "Believe thatye receive, and ye shall have."- Mark 11:24. That is it saving faith is there! That is the climax. You cannot get beyond it. If you stop short of it, you are unsaved; if you reach it, salvation is yours in that instant. Be on your guard here! Satan is in ambush! "Believe that ye receive," says Jesus. "Believe that you have it, and you have it," say some; that is simple nonsense! Those who can receive such a sentiment may; I could not, without first casting away my sense, feeling and reason, which would be next to casting away my faith. It goes far to make salvation wholly dependent upon MY WILL, instead of the power of Christ:- it would make a Divinity of my will. Alas! I might as well pretend by my will to create a world, or to thaw the ice around the pole, or to cleanse hell of devils. Who but God can will a thing, and it' cometh to pass? It is God alone "who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will."-- Ephes. 1: 11. I know experimental salvation is the result of two wills,