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THE DEATH STRUGGLE!

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WHERE is an inherent principle in human nature to defend whatever it holds dear, and it is natural to oppose all attempts to invade the sanctity of our possessions, or violently to trespass within the circle of our affections. The resistance offered will bear a proportion to the value set upon the object of attack. This law is traceable in all the stages of our existence, and in the smallest as well as the greatest things. It is not even confined to the human family, but pervades the brute creation. Let the nest of the sparrow be invaded by the kite, and with its puny strength it will defend its helpless young from its strong enemy until it can no longer strive, and only gives up when death closes the contest. So, too, with the human race. The child will oppose, with all its infant powers and passions, the injury or abstraction of the playthings it delights in. The man defends with all the might of brute force, influence, or legal warranty, the property his diligence has gained him. The mother, with the desperation of a mother's love, will die in defence of her children. The soldier, with the fortitude of a patriot, will brave the cannon or the sabre for his country's liberty and safety, and the haughty cavalier will risk his life in vindication of what he calls his honour. In the development of this law, especially in its more modified forms, the perversity of our nature most strikingly appears. For instance, to look no further than the circle of the Christian Church, how often are men found there who will be constantly fighting and struggling about some little foibles of their own, under the pretence of defending what they call the purity of the church-levying visionary armies against themselves - building ideal barriers across their path, or across that of the community to which they belong for the pure purpose of routing the one or subverting

the other? and yet while thus valiantly engaged in battling with the foes of their own creation, even to the making of great personal sacrifices of time and peace of mind, they seldom try to lift up a standard against the enemy who is all this time intrenched in their own hearts, and is using, as it were, the fragments of the mimic conflict to strengthen his position and consolidate his power there.

It requires, however, that in prosecuting our resistance to opposing influences we have an accurate appreciation and an enlightened dread of their power and malignity. Many portious of Scripture imply that there is to be a conflict carried on by man against sin. But there has been, ever since the fall, an element in our nature rather sympathetic with than antagonistic to the power of sin; and it is scarcely to be supposed that men should be prepared to struggle against that towards which they not only have no antipathy or aversion, but with which, on the contrary, they sympathise and acquiesce. Man is, however, essentially a religious creature; he feels, as it were intuitively, that he must have his God. And he is, moreover, anxious, of course from pure self-interest, to worship a true God; and he feels that none can be a true God who is not opposed to sin. Common intelligence, apart altogether from revelation, and to a great extent apart, too, from civilisation, common intelligence teaches him that that only can be a true God who punishes sin and rewards virtue; it teaches him that the first principle, so to speak, in the nature of a God, must be an aversion to sin, and a disposition to punish it. Difference of idea as to what is sin in the broad sense of the term can scarcely exist in the minds of men, especially civilised and similarly enlightened one with another, and therefore in a land enlightened by the same revelation, by one Gospel, it is needless to point out minutely what is sin. It is only necessary to attempt a definition of sin which we believe all men will be disposed to accept. Sin, then, is that principle in the hearts and minds of men, which has a tendency to draw away their thoughts and desires from the closer study of the character of the God in whose existence they believe, and whom they must know intimately, in order to perform His will. Now, the first impulse

which impels a man to seek God, or to study His character, is fear of the consequences of sin. And this attempt to study the character of God is the first commencement of his conflict with sin. For, to study God's character, he must use the light of revelation, and in so doing he uses a light which exposes all the deformities of sin, and teaches him, if he employs it aright, to regard as an enemy what he once regarded as a friend. He now finds that he had better, for his own sake, seek to be rid of that to which he formerly cleaved so closely. The more he studies the character of God the more strongly marked becomes the sinfulness of sin, because it is impossible to peruse the lineaments of Deity, as mirrored on the page of revelation, without seeing in Jehovah more than a stern and despotic judge. The more closely he communes with Him, the more distinctly does he recognise and appreciate that mercy which has provided a refuge from the arts of that treacherous friend whose wiles have so allured and fascinated him; and the deeper the insight he obtains into the nature of God, the clearer the views he gets of His forbearance and long-suffering, the more will he become alive to the ingratitude of his sins; and by degrees he gets light from God to see sin as a foe, and strength from God to struggle. with it as an enemy.

But if this is the legitimate effect of studying God's character, how is it so many try to escape this conflict? They see what they shall be led to if they go on with their investigations on this theme; and, anticipating the result, they stop before it has quite disgusted them with sin. They then, by an effort of their own, seek to suppress the incipient emotions already excited, and at length forcibly banish from the door of their hearts that Spirit who was, as it were, in the very act of stepping across the threshold to take up His abode there.

But, not to wander from the subject, it not only implies that there is to be a conflict with sin, but it leads us to consider the nature of that conflict.

It is a conflict with an enemy who seems to be a friend. Our unrenewed nature has such a sympathy with sin that we are not disposed to struggle against it, and when we do find that a conflict must be waged, we do not know how to begin it.

this in its turn, again, is regulated by the vigilance and constancy which we exercise in watching against him. There must

be a mutual regulation of tactics, so to speak, each dependent on the movements of the other. If we, on our part, are more constantly watching, we shall be less constantly fighting. There would be fewer of those terrible and overwelming contests which so often take place with some of us, when the enemy cometh in like a flood and rides for a time rampant over all our purest and holiest affections, if there was a more unremitting vigil kept over ourselves. We must not lay down our arms, even in times of peace, but must always cherish a war-spirit against sin and Satan, until, in an untroubled world, a territory which no foeman dares invade, where nothing that defileth ever comes, we shall enjoy a peace which passeth understanding.

Our great enemy is, if we may be allowed the expression, unsystematic and capricious in his attacks. He levels his darts with deadly accuracy at every heart, and trammels in his creeping snare the whole human family. But still he is fastidious in the choice of his victims; he does not attack all with equal obstinacy He runs his malevolent eye over the myriads of his prey, and marks with stern resolve the objects for his fiercest assaults. It is not that he attacks some the less, but he attacks others more. Thus, while he lures within his dreadful net the entire human race, there are some he seems to try to make more specially his own. He turns the sweetest and most joyous traits of human character into weapons to accomplish his own designs. As he hovers over the world which he has blighted he sometimes picks out the fairest and the gentlest for his peculiar prey. The light-hearted youth who loves to ramble amidst the bowers of pleasure, innocent in itself, will often find the serpent when he least expects it, coiled up beneath some fragrant flower, or dragging its slimy folds across some clustering shrub. But though there is no doubt that sin and temptation have their favourite objects of attack, we have no power of determining which these are, or to what extent we may be amongst the number. It therefore becomes us all to be upon our guard, remembering that our adversary has a far more deadly hatred against us than we have against him, and that there is not one

examination. We must study ourselves in the light of God's word. Taking Christ Himself as our great pattern and exemplar, taking His life as the touchstone of our own, we must jealously search out those points in which we most prominently violate His example, and there we must post a watchman. Just as the. general, who anticipates an attack, surveys the position which he holds, and concentrates his strongest force upon its most vulnerable points; and then with his telescope seeks to pierce the distance and sweep the horizon, so as to catch the first glimpse of the advancing foe, in order that he may rally his men to resistance; so we, most jealously watching those points where sin most easily besets us, must take our stand on some firm promise, and, seizing the telescope of Eternal Truth, as centred in a focus in God's Holy Word, we must point it towards the looming mists that gather in the sky, so that as soon as our grim foe shows his black crests and gory banners afar off, we may have time to put on the whole armour of God, that tried and welltempered armour which shall shiver and turn back all the fiery darts of the wicked one, and shall enable us to cry, while we wave the standard of the cross exultingly above our heads, "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loves us." A conflict, therefore, which involves so much constant watching of ourselves, on account of the vigilance of our foe, must be an engrossing warfare; it calls upon us for unremitting as well as earnest opposition, an opposition against our very selves, and an opposition which, in some sense, instead of bringing us glory in the event of success, calls for humiliation at our hands, on account of our inability to wage the warfare or ourselves, and demands the surrender of all the glory to Him in whose might we have overcome.

Let us, however, in the next place (not to anticipate our plan), consider the extent to which we may be required to prosecute our resistance.

And, in order to gain something like an idea of this, we must look for a little at our foe. We have been discussing the nature of the strategy we are to employ against him, but the extent to which we may have to carry our opposition is determined in a great measure by the pertinacity with which he assails us. And

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