order to be converted, just as those they read of felt, and go through all the stages that they went through, and come out at last just in the way that they came out into joy and peace in believing?

Yes, perhaps, if only one or two cases were given, and these were continually studied by the dear seeking soul in the hope that in following exactly the example set to him in them, he might arrive at the same happy result there shown to him.

But the fact of this book showing, as I hope it will, a number of conversions under all sorts of varying circumstances, with all sorts of differences in the stages which the subjects of them passed through before attaining to the wished-for result, will, I hope, prevent the danger of any dear soul being hindered on its way to Christ, and to joy and peace in believing in Him, by being led to suppose any of these accidental circumstances to be essential to the thing itself, and so being led to seek to realise such things in itself as parts of some process which it supposes it needs to pass through, instead of coming straight to Christ without thinking of itself at all.

I can quite fancy that if there had been no witness for the Lord Jesus, when He was on earth, but the woman who had sought with such earnestness of purpose merely to touch his clothes, with the conviction that if she could but do so she should be whole (Mark v. 28), and who did touch his clothes, and, according to her faith, was made whole, many other poor sick ones, with all their attention fixed on her case, might soon have got their thoughts turned away from Him to his mere dress, and coming with only faith in that, unconnected with Him, instead of, as in her case, faith in it only as belonging to Him, might miss their cure altogether. For God will not bless idolatrous worship even of the most

holy things. Hezekiah had to break in pieces even the serpent of brass by which God had wrought such wonderful miracles of healing, because the Israelites had turned to worshipping it instead of Him for having given it (2 Kings xviii. 4). And it is to be feared numbers of dear souls now have turned to worshipping Christ's Church and his Sacraments instead of Himself and the Father through Him.

But as we have in the Gospel not merely her case, but also those of so many others whom the Lord healed in all sorts of different ways, all danger of this kind is taken away, and all the healed ones, with whatever difference of circumstances in their individual cases, are witnesses with perfect oneness of testimony to his power and readiness to heal. And I trust that as, in these his miracles of mercy on men's bodies, so in the case of his miracles of mercy on men's souls, which shall be brought forward here, the variety of the circumstances attending them will prevent attention being given to these mere surroundings, and cause it to be fixed only on the dear Lord Himself. For "there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all" (1 Cor. xii. 4-6).

"I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb" (Rev. vii. 9, 10).

CHAPTER XVIII.

WORLDLY RELIGIOUS ONES.

They did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues, for their heart was not right with him. -Ps. lxxviii. 36, 37.

ST. JOHN says in a passage which I put at the head of two earlier chapters that the sons of God are "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man" (John i. 13), implying that any apparent sonship to Him attained to in any one of these three ways must be false.

I took the latter two of them-" of the will of the flesh" and "of the will of man"-as texts on which to speak in considering two forms of false conversion, but left out the first, "of blood,”—by descent, that is, from our fathers and mothersbecause this would seem to point not to any sort of false conversion, but to one form of the entirely unconverted state-the condition, namely, of those who, though with worldly unchanged hearts, yet make a profession of belonging to God because their parents did so before them.

They are not stony-ground hearers with a shallow, nor thorny-ground hearers with a deeper but still ineffectual conversion, but have by their worldliness made their hearts the hard trodden way-side, into which the seed of the Word has no chance of entering to be the means of any conversion at all.

F

Their fear of God is like that of the " men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," brought by Sennacherib into the land of Israel, who brought with them into it "gods of their own," and yet wanted to show the God of Israel some reverence as "the God of the land," lest it should not go well with them in it, and so they "feared the Lord and served their own gods" (2 Kings xvii. 24-33).

They are, as compared with the altogether godless ones about them, "children of the kingdom," but only such as those of whom our Lord spoke his terrible words: "Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. viii. 11, 12).

They do the same mischief to the cause of God now as the false professors of his name of old of whom St. Paul said, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you" (Rom. i. 24). For the heathen about us, I mean the sadly large number everywhere who make no profession of the name of God, look at our lives who profess to believe in Him, and if they see these contradict our profession, think our worship of Him a lie. And each new church or chapel erected by us in the vain hope of drawing them into it they only look upon as another embodiment of the lie, and so are confirmed by the sight of it in their determination to keep as far away as possible from the lying system, as it seems to them, which it is intended to uphold.

So these unconverted, worldly-hearted and worldly-living religious ones, while, as regular church and chapel-goers, seemingly so different from these haters of both church and chapel, are not

only going with them in the broad road to destruction, but are one chief means used by the devil of keeping them in it and of causing them to blaspheme in their hearts the name of our God by thinking that He is nothing and his worship a lie, because of the contradiction to it of the lives of his professed worshippers.

APOLOGY FOR HARD SPEAKING.

But I am afraid if any dear religious unconverted one has had patience to read so far he may be inclined to say, "There, now; just what we said; so presumptuous, so uncharitable, so setting themselves up, I do not know where, in goodness above us poor ones!"

No, my dear Brother, we do not set ourselves up above you in goodness. We dare not, for we know something of our own sins, and nothing of yours. Instead of setting ourselves up as good, we have seen ourselves so hopelessly bad that we could not bear the sight, but were driven by it to seek safety outside of ourselves and so came to Christ and found it in Him.

If those in the Ark, just before God shut them in, had called to the poor ones outside, "Come in here; we are safe, but you will be drowned if you stay where you are," would that have been setting themselves up above them in goodness?

There is a flood of God's wrath against sin presently coming, of which that flood that drowned the old world was only a weak type; and God has provided an Ark of safety, of which that ark of Noah was also only a weak type; and we have by his grace entered into it and are safe, but you must perish if you remain outside. And we earnestly call upon you to come in and be safe with us.