won't lose their away-that is utterly impossible. "Call upon God, call upon Him in the day of trouble: He will answer thee, and thou shalt glorify Him.”

But then it is to be done with thanksgiving, and I must not run that over. I would not run over this text for the world. I know I have failed with it; it is grand to be wrestling with a text too big for a three-quarter-of-an-hour sermon. "With thanksgiving." What is that that crane of mine would do again? Thanksgiving is the oil that keeps all the machinery sweet. In everything give thanks. Do not forget thanksgiving, or your prayers will be lop-sided, like birds that have only got one wing, because the devil, that fowler, has shot off the other, and the poor thing cannot fly straight. It is not only supplication or only thanksgiving, but always the two together, "prayer and supplication with thanksgiving." Listen to the beat of these mighty eagle wings, prayer and thanksgiving; see, how the soul drives onward into the haven of God's light and peace.

The other night I told you about the eagle. Let me tell you again. A friend of a friend of mine, who told me the story, had an eagle. He caught it when young, and had brought it up, as far as could be, like a domestic fowl. He had, in God's providence, to go to the other side of the world, and was selling off everything. He wondered what he should do with his eagle, and the happy thought came to him that he would not give it to anybody, but would give it back to itself-he would set it free. And he opened the place in which it had been kept, and brought it to the back green. How he was astonished! It walked about, feeling as if this were rather bigger than its ordinary run; but that was all. He was disappointed; and he took the great, big bird in his arms, and lifted it, and set it up on

his garden wall; and it turned, and looked down at him. The sun had been obscured behind a cloud; but just then the cloud passed away, and the bright, warm beams poured out. The eagle lifted its eyes, pulled itself up. I wonder was it thinking; can an eagle recollect the crags and the cliffs, the revellings in the tempests of long ago, the joyous thunderings and the flashing lightnings? At any rate, it pulled itself up, and lifted one wing and stretched out "by prayer and supplication"—and it lifted the other wing-" with thanksgiving" -and it stretched it, and it gave a scream, and soon was a vanishing speck away in the blue of heaven. "Be full of care for nothing." Anxious, disturbed Christian, you are an eagle living in a hen-house! Try your wings. "In every thing by prayer and supplication." Come out of the hen-house; you have a bigger run than you think you have. Let your requests be made known unto God. "And the peace of God"-and you will scarcely, perhaps, believe me, but my sermon was to have been upon the peace of God; we have only got through the introduction"the peace of God, that passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

The Lord bless to us this discourse; may we have received enough to lighten us and strengthen us for to-day. Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

RESIST THE DEVIL.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH, ON SUNDAY EVENING,

OCTOBER 19TH, 1890,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

TEXT-Judges xiv. 5-9.

"Behold, a young lion roared against him (Samson). And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or mother what he had done. And after a time he returned and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion. And he took thereof in his hands and went on eating."

SAMSON, as he comes before us here, will give us our subject. Let me say frankly that I know that in dealing with Samson there are places where you are skating over rather thin ice. But do not let us turn away as if there were something here rather indelicate and "risky." There is simply here a flesh and blood man- -a good deal of flesh and blood with his good points and his bad; and the suggestion running all through that whatever was in him that is good, and gracious, and desirable has its root and foundation in this, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him;" and whatever is forbidding and disastrous belongs to the opposite of Vol. II.-No. 24.

that expression, "The Spirit of the Lord left him, and he wist not that the Spirit had departed from him."

I do not hesitate to use Samson to point a moral. 'Tis the way of the Bible, not to speak of humanity and sin in the abstract, but of actual sinful men, and how the Spirit of Holiness can give them power.

"Behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid." Sudden, surprising danger is brought before us here. How true that is of the life of young men still. Are there not, my brothers, temptations that leap upon you-spiritual wickednesses that come upon us unawares and unexpectedly? "Or ever we are aware," our soul is in a crisis in which victory or disaster, holiness or sin are the issues-Christ or Satan, heaven or hell, life or death. This Samson was going down to Timnath on thoughts of love intent, never dreaming of such danger. Do not let us hesitate to talk about his errand; let us neither snigger sillily about it, nor let us drop it as if it were something the pulpit has nothing to do with :-on his way to see his "sweetheart," here is Samson with his very life suddenly in danger. Why should I not talk about this, when so many of you go on the same errand? I do not say it is a wrong road to travel. I have tramped it myself. It is in the providence of God. God speed you and guide you well. God grant you may choose better than Samson. Do not trust to the sight of the eyes in this business.

Well, Samson was not thinking of any danger. He was passing through a vineyard-and vineyards then were open,

as they still are, in Eastern lands-tasting its fruits, possibly, and humming some snatch of a love-song, maybe, when suddenly this crisis came upon him. A young lion roared against him. Thank God for that roar. For there are some sins that destroy a fellow without roaring. The woman was a greater danger than the roaring lion. There was no roaring there. There was tremendous danger. He escaped the one, and more than once failed to escape the other. The springing temptation-the gleaming of the teeth, and the lashing of the tail, and the roaringgave him time and chance. It was the roar that was the saving thing. When the roar is heard by a manly fellow, there is something inside him that roars too-the love of life roars against death; deep calls to deep.

And just because the brute roared, it gave the man warning, and roused him. He flung himself upon the lion, and rent him as he would have done a sucking kid. I thank God for the roar; for the sins that are unmistakable. You know their mission, and their intent, just as if a lion were there in your path, with its flaming eyes and gleaming teeth, and crouching for the spring. You know where you are. You, my young brother, you know them down in the City; you know every day you live what these temptations mean. They hunt for the precious life; nothing less than that. Royal Bengal tigers, man-eaters, are these destroyers, that would rather taste human blood, and Christian blood, than any meaner prey. I do not mean to name them. We know them. They war against the soul; they spring upon us through the eye, and they dart in upon the soul through