1t you want to know what sin is, again the Prophets advice holds good. We must go to the Bible and to the Cross of Christ to learn what sin really is. In this Book we find sin revealed in all its subtilty and deadly power. We see clearly revealed what God thinks of it and how He must regard it.
If we want to learn in what repentance consists, where shall we go better than to this Book? Where in all literature will you find anything finer or more expressive than the Sist Psalm? Where find a better filustration than that of Peter repenting after his denial of his Lord?
Where shall we learn the secret of prayer, where but from this Book of prayer and praying men? We think of Samuel of David, of St "Why," you ask, "should we go back to these words of the Prophet? What application can they have for "us in this twentieth century?" I ask you to think of them this evering because I am convinced that they enshrine a warning that is perennially apt and necessary, and more nec-assary than ever in this our day, for there is a tendency abroad to deprecate and to abandon.the old ways, whether it be the simple and old-fashioned faith of our forefathers, or the customs which were generally observed by them, the keeping of Sunday, their habits of Church attendance, of family prayers and of reading the Bible. The Victorian mind and the Victorian faith are almost a stigma of reproach. There is a tendency to think that the only truth that is of value is that which has the approval of the modern mind, Do not misunderstand me. I believe in a progressive revelation. Of course there must be progress,—there is an. ultraconservatism which may well be deplored—but we do well to remember the words of the Lord Jesus; "Every wise man will bring out of his treasures things both new and old," and I would promise that ihe man who sneers at everything old, and fancies that wisdom is the privilege of the modern mind, has very little of wisdom himself. The alphabet and the simple rules of Paul, or, above all, of the lessons of prayer we may learn from Him Who taught us how to pray, and himself centered his whole life about communion with his Father in prayer.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.