opportunity? Is it merely a mockery to tell a poor man, or a very busy man, that he should be fully persuaded in his own mind? Must such an one, by the very necessity of his condition, be always either careless or obstinate; believing nothing at all deeply, or nothing at all fairly or reasonably?

But before we try to answer this question, we must allow and fully submit to one thing, which applies to every one of us. When we speak of being fully persuaded every man in his own mind, we must be well aware that there are a great many points on which to be so persuaded is altogether impossible; ignorant we are, and ignorant we must continue to be. To the most learned man that ever lived, the volume containing what he did not know would have been far larger than the volume of what he did know; and besides those many things which none of us know, each one of us must be ignorant of a great many others also, which other men, not all, but some other men, may know very well. One man's common business or trade is a mystery to another man; if we understand our own calling well, yet that calling is but one out of a great number, and of other callings we are mostly ignorant. We must therefore be quite contented not to be fully persuaded about a great many things; or rather to be fully persuaded of

one thing only about them, that we do not understand them and cannot judge of them.

This is inevitable, nor is it to be murmured at. Thousands of things exist unknown to us so much as by name; thousands more exist with which we have and shall have to the end of our lives no concern at all. We do not want therefore to be fully persuaded about them; we have nothing whatever to do with them. But the great point is, to be fully persuaded about that with which we have to do. Something, many things, we must do daily; with many things we are concerned nearly continually. We do not care to be fully persuaded about all things; it is impossible, it is not needful; but where we must act, there it is that we desire to act upon a reasonable conviction; that we may not be like mere machines, whose spring of action comes to them from without; that we may not act from hasty impulse or from blind habit, but in the faith and fear of God, doing what we believe to be His will.

So then where men choose to remain in ignorance, they are bound also not to act at all. I will not undertake to determine what things there are which may be left unknown, and who are the persons that may so leave them. But many cases there are in which a man may well be justified for leaving a whole subject unstudied, when it has no

necessary claim upon his attention. This may be so, I suppose, in some instances, with public affairs; there are persons who without blame may abstain altogether from studying them. But then they are bound most strictly to abstain from talking about them and acting about them. They are bound to be altogether quiet and follow their own business, and not to meddle directly or indirectly in that of which they are knowingly and by their own choice ignorant. But if a man keeps his reason and his conscience away from public affairs, how dares he let his passion or his interest take part in them? Yet the most ignorant men are very often the most violent partisans. Let them understand and believe, and then act earnestly; but to act without being fully persuaded, cannot be otherwise than sin.

But I return to what is after all the great question, how can we be fully persuaded in those matters about which we must act?

there are on which we cannot act.

Many things

Some things

on which we need not act. But, after all, our life has a business, it has manifold relations; we must speak, we must act; how can we attain that full persuasion without which our words and our works are alike idle and alike faithless?

Now the main answer, I verily believe, is to be found in these words of the apostle James. "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." Even among those who do pray regularly, the prayer for wisdom does not, I suspect, form a part of their petitions. Many of us seem to have a confused notion that sense, reason, good judgment, or by whatever name we call our intellectual faculties, are quite distinct from spiritual blessings, and are things too worldly to be named in our prayers. Yet what was Solomon's choice, but "an understanding heart to judge the people"? That is, a sound and powerful mind capable of discerning the truth and the right in the line of his daily duty. Solomon's choice

should be our prayer; in St. James's words, we should ask of God to give us wisdom. And as in other points of our conduct, so it is also in this; that by asking God to give us a wise and understanding heart, we confess to ourselves that our opinions and judgments are serious things, for we do not bring mere trifles before God's notice in our prayers; and that, being serious things, they demand our own serious care; that duty and sin belong to them; that as our salvation depends on our lives, so our lives depend upon our thoughts and judgments; for if we act ill because we have judged ill, and have judged ill because we took no pains to judge well, then the sin is not taken away from our act but remains in it; and the act was an act of what scripture calls folly, the folly which

sees not and regards not God. Whatever be our business in life, if we make it a part of our daily prayers to God that He will give us understanding in it; that He will assist our judgment, so that, seeing what is right and true, we may maintain and follow it both in word and deed; I do not doubt that such prayers will be answered, and that where we now act blindly and carelessly, according to any prevailing feeling or fancy, there we shall act upon the full persuasion of our minds, and that persuasion will be in general according to the will of God.

This will be so, I think, with a very large part of the folly of the world, the folly of mere carelessness and lightness, which acts without thinking at all. But I spoke also of another sort of folly which is too common also; the folly which acts from mere habit and prejudice, which is very obstinate in its decisions, but yet cannot be said to be fully persuaded in its own mind, because reasonable conviction has no part in it at all. Is there not a danger here lest in praying for wisdom we should fatally deceive ourselves; and, having certain prejudices so fixed in us that we will not examine them, lest after prayer we should be only the more confirmed in them, as though God Himself had sanctioned them, and to doubt them were to doubt Him? And then comes that fearful state, when the very mind and conscience is defiled; when in