But

not act upon the decision. This is the state of many. It is a cheap thing to know what is right; to make right decisions; even to resolve. The trial is in the act. Many die in their sins, for want of moral earnestness to break them off. A weak will is their perdition. But there is even a sadder case than the end of those who never begin to act upon their faith. There are some who make a struggle, and for a while set themselves free, and seem to make their choice for ever. After a time they waver; and after wavering, go back. they are never as they were before. As a stream, checked by a momentary dam, bursts with greater vehemence; so it is for the most part with relapsing Christians. They go back each man to his particular sin, with a harder boldness, and a sevenfold greater abandonment of life and heart. For instance, worldly people, who have been brought by sickness and sorrow to sadder and wiser thoughts, if they go back to the world again, are proverbially the most worldly of all. So in other kinds of sin for despised truth deadens the conscience; and light departs from those who will not follow it. The darkness of a relapsed soul is of all the greatest.

Now, if this be the cause and the danger of indecision, let us see how we may detect and overcome it in ourselves.

What has been said shews

1. That the right way to know the truth is, not speculation, but practice; not to reason about it, but to do it. There are many things which cannot be proved by reasoning; or if they can, reasoning comes in so tardily, as to form no real part of the proof; like as it is in the fact of day-light, or of our waking consciousness, or of the sight of our eyes. All these are perceived and known in act, by instincts which outstrip and go before all reflection. It is by putting the decision of the conscience and the will to the test of practice, that we become sure we have judged aright. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." For instance, people who live a free life shrink from the decided course of religion, because they think it must be austere and straitened. They would fain taste the peace, before they commit themselves to it; and ascertain its freedom, before they trust it. When they read, "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee thy heart's desire;" they think, If He would give me my heart's desire, I would delight myself in Him.' When our Lord says, "Ye will not come unto Me, that ye may have life;" they say in themselves, 'Give me life, and I will come ;' that is, they would have life without coming. In

fact, they cannot make up their minds to trust God, and take Him at His word.

And this is specially true in respect to all doctrines of faith. People will not believe them till they see the reasons. But they never can see the reasons till they have believed. Faith is the condition on which we, who were born blind, receive our sight. Intellectual knowledge depends in chief on the spiritual perceptions. And spiritual perceptions issue out of our spiritual nature, as it is matured by faith. But faith is the decision of the soul, trusting itself altogether to the hand of God. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind, and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways." We shall never see the harmony of truth, if we first ask for proof. When faith has received the doctrine, reason will see it as in the light of noon.

2. Another truth taught us by this is, that the effect of a faithful and decided life is to strengthen and confirm the choice we have made. There is no knowledge like the knowledge of experience. 1 St. James i. 5-8.

How hard it is to realise the look of any country by description in a book; or to know the spirit of a man from his written life: or to appreciate sweetness from illustration, or harmony from the written language of music. How the least personal experience by sight or hearing gives to all these a vividness and reality which makes them at once part of our minds for ever. For example, people who live in a habit of prayer will tell us that it is full of peace, of a peculiar happiness. They never knew it till they tasted it: they never tasted it till they tried it. Take as a proof, those who long shrunk from frequent Communion, partly for fear of binding themselves to a stricter life, partly from a notion that frequency would produce irreverence or insensibility. Ask them, after some years of frequent Communion, they will tell that they you never thought to attain such clear and undoubting certainty of the deep reality and exceeding reward of that great precept of love that now they have forgotten the duty in the blessedness: that it is not so much obedience as delight: that so far from losing the sweetness of that Holy Sacrament, they never tasted it before: that now they fear to lose, far more than once they feared to approach it: that a new world has opened to them, of which the altar is the centre, and the Sacrifice which lies upon it is the life. In it they see all God's mercies,

the incarnation and atonement of His Son, the love of the Holy Ghost. It is to them now as a reflection of His goodness and His beauty, His very presence and the vision of peace. And so it is in like manner also with a life of repentance, from which men recoil as from a life-long sadness. Nothing can persuade them that repentance has a peculiar calm and joy. In no way can it be realised but by actual participation. Every day deepens the sense of the Divine forgiveness: the deeper their humiliation, the sharper the yoke upon their neck, the clearer, brighter, and more serene their inmost heart. The darker it is to the eyes of the world without, the fuller of light within. What the world calls ascetic rigour and intolerable gloom, is to them freedom and the joy of a holy sadness.

There is nothing we oftener say than that sorrows are tokens of God's love; and yet when they come, how few really so receive them, and give themselves up to be led and taught by Him. They shrink, and seek out their own consolations, and shape their own ways, with a real though disguised feeling that God has made an inroad upon their peace; that they must build up again what He has overthrown. And what misery is this; to beat ourselves to pieces against the Divine will, which stands firm as necessity and iron. Even when we do not directly clash with it, yet how sore it