would lead us, that we can ever be sure that we are not unconsciously actuated by the direction of unclean demons; and we never can be certain, in the case of any thought or feeling or impulse within us not inspired from above, that it is not whispered in our ear or instilled into our heart by some wretched and malignant fiend. Not by the mere natural working of our fallen mind does the evil suggestion arise; but weaving in with that, mysteriously coöperating with that, reinforcing and aggravating that, comes the baneful influence from the place of perdition!

And yet, though this truth be a most awful one, it is a salutary one; it is one which it is good for us to remember and reflect upon. Is there not something here to fill us with the greater horror and detestation of sin, to lead us to the more' resolute battling with temptation? Think that in every temptation to sin you have a real being, a person, trying to lead you into guilt and ruin. Think that every time you sin, you are doing the very thing that your very worst and most malicious enemy wishes you to do, and is pushing and enticing you to do! Christian brethren, is not that a motive to hate and shun sin, to resist and battle with temptation? And remember, too, that by God's grace, and by the aid of that stronger and mightier Spirit of holiness, and truth, and comfort, who is promised to be with us, you will not resist in vain. Your ally is a thousand-fold more powerful than your adversary: the Spirit of the living God,

who is upon your side, is able to strengthen you to withstand the strength, and to enlighten you to unravel the wiles, even of one who, so far as we know, appears to be God's craftiest and mightiest, though most miserable and most wicked creature. And by the very nature of this creation which God made, honest, conscious resistance to temptation goes to make the temptation grow weaker, even as compliance with temptation goes to make the temptation grow stronger. And the same law extends, we know, to the chief tempter of all. How speaks God's Word? "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you!" Faithfully in God's strength strive against every impulse to sin, and with each successive defeat the attacks of the father of mischief will grow weaker and less frequent. Under that law God has bound him, that earnestly resisted he must flee; it is only where he and his agents meet a half-hearted opposition, or even find the doors of the soul thrown open to admit them, that they can enter in, and set up a sway in that heart, and bind it in chains that never will be broken, — the chains of inveterate, ineradicable habit, of hopeless worldliness of soul and wickedness of life. Oh, my Christian brethren, as you care for your souls, strive and pray against temptation; you are resisting Satan then! Every time you wilfully yield to temptation, you are welcoming the Devil and his angels to your heart; you are giving them a settlement there from which you may never be able to dislodge them, here

or hereafter! How solemn a meaning does all this cast upon that petition in our Lord's prayer, in which He bids us say, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!" Many of you know that the word translated evil there, means the evil one; so that Christ speaks of the temptation and the tempter as meaning the same thing: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the tempter; that is the meaning of the petition; the prayer for deliverance from temptation is a prayer for deliverance from Satan and his dark array. All temptation, everything, every influence that can ever lead to sin or suffering, is of him or through him, or seconded and aided by him. Oh, may God's kind, mighty Spirit so sanctify these poor, weak, wayward hearts, that we may rightly resist evil spirits, until they finally flee away!

"If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."-1 COR. xvi. 22.

THINK, my friends, that words so solemn as these need nothing beyond their own weighty meaning to commend them to our graye attention. Still, it is worth

our remembering, because it is something that shows St. Paul attached especial importance to them, that the great Apostle wrote them with his own hand, at the close of an Epistle which, according to his wont, he had dictated to another. Some think that it was part of the thorn in the flesh" he bore, that his hands always trembled so, that he wrote slowly and with pain. And you can all imagine how, when this Epistle came to Corinth, and the Christians there bent over its leaves in little groups, all anxious to know what was St. Paul's last message to them, though they would read with deep concern the Apostle's words, traced in the clear, bold handwriting of

*Preached at the celebration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Stephanas, and Fortunatus, and Achaicus, they would look with deeper interest yet upon the tremulous lines, where the Apostle had at the last taken the pen into his own hand, and striven to give in a single sentence the sum of all he had said before. If there was anything in the whole Epistle which more than another he wished them to remember, surely they had it here!

And as to the words in which this verse is expressed, you know that Anathema means accursed, and Maranatha means The Lord is coming. So the text means, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed ; and it is understood that the addition of the Maranatha makes a more solemn fashion of denouncing such a one's doom.

But it is easier to understand the Apostle's meaning than it is at the first thought to approve his sentiment. It seems a curious thing, and a contradictory thing, and not like the doing of a man who knew much of human nature, to enforce, by a fearful curse, the duty of loving the kind, merciful, loving Saviour, whom we specially remember this day. For that is not the way to get any one to love Christ. You cannot frighten the human soul into loving. You cannot make a man love Christ by assuring him that he shall suffer in endless perdition if he do not love Christ. Even if by such means you made any one anxious to love Christ, he might not be able to do so, though he were ever so desirous. But we are to