gling spirit in the monastic cell, and as he climbed St. Peter's stairs at Rome, or flung his inkstand at the dark shadow on the walls of the Wartburg; who that has gazed upon Saul in the agony of his blindness and selfaccusations, waiting for Ananias; or read Bunyan's "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," that makes us feel how real to him were the Slough of Despair, the Hill Difficulty, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death-does not feel that these men, by the grace of God were made victorious in the great inward struggle of life, before ever they were prepared to strike those blows whose echo rings yet in the ears of the world?

Practically, then, the good fight is fought within the soul. Paul fought with the beasts within before he fought with the beasts at Ephesus. He struggled against his own proud heart, before he grappled or was fitted to grapple with the great dragon of Pagan idolatries. In the full impetus of his course he speaks of pressing forward to the mark. He kept his body under, and brought it into subjection. He found a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. Here was the fight which in the eye of heaven was the Thermopyla of his life's campaign. Without having been a victor here, he had never made Felix tremble on his judgment-seat, or disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus, or preached the Gospel to Cæsar's household. But victorious within, he was armed and strengthened for a life-long struggle with principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places. Victories at Philippi, at Ephesus, at Rome, were but the natural sequents of victories won over the lusts and vanities and passions of his own heart.

This good fight is the one to which we are all summoned. You may not feel that there is any to be fought. Satan may be besieging you unmolested and at his leisure. He may have not yet completed his battery or fortifications. He may not yet have succeeded in cutting off the hope of retreat. He may not have yet solemnly and formally summoned you to surrender. He may not yet have brought you hopelessly under the range of your own habits; he may not yet have planted his mortars so as to burst their deadly shells in the magazine of conscience. You may be led by the quiet unconcern of your own spirit to feel that for you there is no struggle.

But this would be a great mistake. The struggle must-it will come. The sooner the better. Every hour's delay to resist diminishes the hope of successful resistance. Even now, is not the foe dangerously near? Have you not already been yielding too long? What effort have you put forth to save your soul? What struggle against an evil nature within you has been yet noted by the great cloud of witnesses? Have you yet passed from darkness to light? Are you ranged under the banner of God and truth? Are you trampling on one after another of those unhallowed desires and feelings and tastes and habits which Christ cannot approve?

If not, it is time that the good fight was begun. It is time that you measured the strength of the foes that withstand your progress toward heaven. A little longer-and you might in vain have worlds given you to purchase the peace of the conscious assurance, "I have fought the good fight!"

XXII.

LIFE AN EDUCATION.

"Reaching forth unto those things which are before."--PHIL. ii. 18.

N old heathen philosopher was once asked what it

A was

was necessary that boys should learn. "Those things," he replied, "which they will need to know when they become men.”

There was sound philosophy in his answer. It embodies the true principle of education. The sports and plays of childhood must not crowd out the lessons that fit one for manly duties-the lessons that train the mind, the heart and all the energies and affections of the soul. If they do it they make one first a plaything, and then a wreck. They fling upon society another instalment of human rubbish. They multiply indolence, crime, and misery. The entire neglect of intellectual, moral and religious training for one generation among the most cultivated people, would throw them back hopelessly and inevitably into barbarism and heathenism.

But the usefulness, happiness, and success of the individual for his whole after life, are usually determined by his early training. A mistake here casts a shadow over all his years, that can scarcely be deepened by the shadows of the grave. Leave his mind unfurnished by wholesome truth, and it ever remains, instead of a parlor or a work

shop, a cobwebbed garret. The vacant apartments of thought are occupied by vermin and rubbish. Leave the passions unsubdued, and they turn the soul into a tiger's cage, and a man grows up a self-willed, capricious, violent, tyrannic being, uncomfortable himself and uncomfortable to everybody else, always in trouble, and practically an Ishmael, domineering or impetuous, a tyrant or a criminal. Let the individual be left to his appetites, let him be indulged in having whatever he craves, and he will always be governed by his impulses, and his thirst for pleasure, till nothing will satisfy him; content will be impossible. He will be uneasy, restless, wretched— in heart like "the wandering Jew," in life "like a wave of the sea, driven of the wind and tossed."

It is a fearful thing-the tragedy of the soul here-to drift upon the years and duties of manhood, with the wisdom of a child, but the will and passions of a man. A catastrophe of some kind is sure. It may be spread out over scores of years, or it may be concentrated in some sudden gust of passion or desperation. Sometimes life becomes a long drawn agony, a protracted spasm of unsatisfied appetite, due simply to the fact that the mind was left to neglect. It grew up uncared for, and became like a garden of weeds, or an uncultured thicket.

We know this. We see it. The picture of the reality before our eyes, painted on canvas woven out of human hopes and fears, and colored in blood. We know also the elements of a happy life-a life whose even flow. knows neither stagnation nor cataract, firm in duty, beautiful in integrity and virtue, rich in inward peace and smiling memories and pure affections, contented with its lot, cheerful in hope, genial in spirit, and abiding consciously under the smile of God. Such a life is no mush

room. It is no morning glory. It is no accident. It is as much the result of training and God's grace, as the harvest is of the seed and sunshine.

Even thus with life bounded by three score years and ten-we feel how important is the education-how important all the influences that shape character, how much depends on the way one lays out in early days the plans for days to come. But prolong existence-make it a thousand years; make it a hundred thousand-and who does not see that if years to come are shaped by the present, the arithmetic of morals is unequal to solve the problem of the importance of these years that are passing

now.

And who can doubt that the future is shaped by the present? All observation assures it. All experience confirms it. The maxims of life assume it. The truth is engraved on the history of character, of nations as of men. As the twig is bent the tree 's inclined." The scarred sappling never forgets its wound. Educate a child in vice, accustom him to falsehood, and hateful as they are, the chances are that he will cling to them, and they will cling to him. He does not, cannot shake off the serpent coil.

When the foundations are laid, it is not easy to go back of them or tear them up; the bounds of the structure are defined. All that is added must be built on it. It is so with character. Manhood completes the plan of youthrarely does more than what that foreshadows. But if time is the soul's childhood, eternity is its manhood. The foundations of the structure are laid here, and its bounds are defined. What we shall be for ever we begin to be now, and the shape which the soul takes in time it carries with it beyond the grave.