all.

There is an Eastern story of a Sultan who overslept himself, so as not to awaken at the hour of prayer. So the Devil came and waked him, and told him to get up and pray. "Who are you," said the Sultan. "O, no matter," replied the other. "My act is good, is it not? No matter who does the good action, so long as it is good." "Yes," replied the Sultan, "but I think you are Satan. I know your face ; you have some bad motive." "But," says the other, "I am not so bad as I am painted. You see I have left off my horns and tail. I am a pretty good fellow, after I was an angel once, and I still keep some of my original goodness." "That's all very well," replied the sagacious and prudent caliph, "but you are the Tempter; that's your business; and I wish to know why you want me to get up and pray." "Well," said the Devil, with a flirt of impatience, “if you must know, I will tell you. If you had slept and forgotten your prayers, you would have been sorry for it afterwards, and penitent; but, if you go on as now, and do not neglect a single prayer for ten years, you will be so satisfied with yourself; that it will be worse for you than if you had missed one sometimes and repented of it. God loves your fault mixed with penitence, more than your virtue seasoned with pride."

There is, however, another temptation lying in wait for us on the side of penitence. It is of repenting and then sinning again, and so thinking that we can keep cleansing our souls over and over again, as we send our clothes every week to be washed. The Magdalen, in the Church of Rome, is the type of those who keep sinning and repenting. The Magdalen appears in the paintings in the church as a beautiful sinner, who is very sorry indeed for having done wrong, but who, as you clearly see, is very sure to begin again. None of the elements of self-denial are written in her lovely face, but only soft sentiments, which love

virtue, and are ready to weep over sin, but not ready to determine effectually not to commit it.

With good resolutions they say, the Devil has constructed his pavements below. He does not object at all to our making a good resolution, provided we do not begin at once to carry it out. Procrastination is one of his devices to accomplish this. He is perfectly willing that we should be saints to-morrow, provided we will keep on sinning today. He gladly gives up the future to God, provided he may have the present to himself. He likes nothing better than the notion of a death-bed repentance. Every time that the religious newspapers announce that some notorious villain has died in the odor of sanctity, that some vile murderer has said on the scaffold that he expected to go direct to heaven because he trusted in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the Devil laughs heartily below. The only way to make the Devil get behind us, is to step forward and begin to do right now, and so leave him behind us. It is no use to resolve to do right unless you begin; and now is the only day of salvation, now the only accepted time. "He who chooses the end, chooses the means," says the proverb. If we are not ready to use the means, we have not really chosen the end. Choose will serve," this day whom ye is a good saying, true now as ever.

ye

In the awful agony of Queen Elizabeth as depicted in the play of Schiller, we see the tragedy of our own lives. She wished an end, she wished to save the life of the man she loved, but she could not conquer her pride sufficiently to choose the means. She longed to pardon him, but she let him die, because she could not persuade herself to forgive him till he begged her forgiveness. But, when he was dead, the pride which had supported her gave way, and there only remained her anguish and remorse in knowing that for a punctilio she had killed the man she loved. It

is one of the most pathetic scenes in dramatic story. We also say, "Yes, we will serve God. Yes, we will help men. Yes, we recognize our responsibility to lead generous lives, to do generous acts. Yes, this time is not ours, it is God's. These means, they belong to him." We know in our hearts that we have no real peace, no real satisfaction, in anything but in what is noble, generous, true. We know that only when we forget ourselves, and live to be good, and do good, we have any real comfort out of life. And yet, choosing the end thus, we do not choose the means. We do not say "I will be a Christian now." We are afraid of our neighbors; afraid of what they will say, if we begin at once to do anything different from the rest of the world. And so we murder in our hearts the one sentiment which alone we really care for, because we will not take the necessary steps towards making it wholly our own.

Another thing which pleases the Devil well is compromise. When a good man goes away ever so little from his convictions and principles, Satan has won the game. We may commit ever so many faults through weakness, if we confess them, and immediately renounce them; but to agree deliberately to do the smallest wrong is the same as though we gave up everything. So, in the temptation of Jesus: the Devil merely asked him to bow down and worship him for one moment, and then he would give him all the kingdoms of the world. I suppose this a parable, and that what happened was this: Jesus saw that if he went the way he actually did go the way of pure truth-telling - the end would be in his crucifixion and defeat. But, if he would only temporize a little, use a little policy, conciliate the Pharisees, be friends with Herod and Pilate, he could easily, by means of his majestic intellect and fascination over the human heart, become King of the Jews, and so establish his religion permanently as a great institution.

So established, it would speedily overcome all the national religions of Greece, Rome, Asia, Africa. All would accept its ideas and laws, and so the Devil would give Jesus the kingdoms of the world in payment for that little con cession. But he said, "Get thee behind me, Satan! for it is written, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."." And from that day he walked, by the highway of simple truth and duty, directly towards his defeat and death; but, through his defeat and death, to an ultimate triumph unpolluted by any alloy of compromise with error and wrong.

Would that we had the courage, now the way, and shown to us that it is the success, as well as of all true nobleness now had the courage to follow in that path.

when he has led way of all real would that we

Another trick of Satan is to persuade us that we can only serve Christ by ecclesiastical methods; by doing something in the church. If he can only make the church take the place of religion, and make religion equivalent in men's minds to church ceremonies, he has gained a point. For many people would gladly become followers of Christ. if they knew that they could follow him immediately by beginning to do as he did; by beginning to clothe the naked and feed the hungry; by beginning to teach the ignorant, out of love to God and man ; by being honest for his sake, true and just in order to advance his cause, faithful in the least duties in order to help the coming of the kingdom of God below. How many would gladly begin to do his work if they knew that in going among their fellow-men in their daily walks here in Boston, they may be Christian: missionaries; that by helping their neighbors they are doing not only a philanthropic but a Christian work, which they can take with them in their hands when they come to stand before God in judgment. What an amount of good

would be done if we only knew that every time we did anything for those who needed help, we did it for Christ. But it is so. Whenever we gather little children out of the streets, and put them into happy homes, we are saying our prayers. Whenever we go to save any lost one, we are going to church. Whenever we utter a manly word for justice and right, we are professors of religion. Whenever we share our food and raiment with those who need, we are eating the Lord's Supper. This is the way to say to Satan, "Get thee behind me!"—to go forward with Christ, doing his work. This is the way that, while we live, we shall live in the fear of God; and, when we die, die in the joy of the Holy Spirit. When we go forward with Christ, we leave Satan behind.

We all have our Satans - each one of us a different Satan. Satan comes to one man in the form of idleness, and makes him waste day after day, year after year, until he has wasted his whole life doing nothing. Satan comes to another man as work, and makes him destroy himself in the opposite way by wearing out prematurely his brain and his body. He comes to another as Christian zeal, and the man becomes a bigot, full of fire for the Lord; but the Lord whom he serves is a God of wrath, a God who cares for trifles, a God who prefers sacrifice to mercy. He comes to another as charity, but it is a charity which tolerates evil, and lets it alone, which has no edge to it, no courage; an indolent charity which is not love at all, but only easy good-nature. So he disguises himself as an angel of light, calling himself Patriotism when he wishes to make nations hate each other; calling himself Christianity when he wishes to make men persecute each other; calling himself Honesty when he wishes to encourage a man in his rude and overbearing ways; and so on, changing himself into every virtue and every grace.