purpose." And by and by, all the grand steps in the process shall be seen in all their sweetness, loveliness, and glory. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate, to be conformed to the image of his Son, and whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified." And well do we know,

Grace will complete what grace begins,

To save from sorrows and from sins;

The work that mercy undertakes

Eternal Wisdom ne'er forsakes.

20 Rom. viii, 28.

21 Rom. viii. 29, 30.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE PERSEVERANCE OF SAINTS, AND HOW IT IS
ACCOMPLISHED.

I REMEMBER Wondering, said Peter, at the title of a book called Ridgley's "Body of Divinity." What could it mean? What could such a body be without a soul? And what could be the soul, but Jesus Christ and his righteousness, and his death for sinners, such as you and me and all men? Yet that book was perhaps several times bigger than my Bible. What could I do with it? But as to the Bible, what could I do without it, though I could never learn its meaning but by the Spirit of God? He that gave it must himself teach it, as he has promised every humble praying soul he would do.

There have been a great many expeditions, you know, to find out the North Pole, by men that never yet have found the Star of Bethlehem, or the Babe lying in the manger. Oh, had they been as anxious for this as that, how happy and successful had their

voyages been! Some lessons may be learned from others' experience of danger. I was once reading about Arctic perils, and the struggles for life. When the men were almost starved to death, about a quarter part of their number were made sick from what they called tin-poisoning. It came from the "canned tomatoes" they had been using, causing severe colic-cramps in the stomach, taking away all their strength. What had been put up for food turned out like arsenic.

Canned theologies, or bodies of divinity, done up in philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ, may produce just such colics in the bowels, by just such heedless poisoning, such mismanagement and careless manufacture for souls on long voyages. There are many such adulterations of the truth, and poisons instead of profits, in the very postulates and methods of the reasonings. Oleomargerine instead of butter is bad enough, but when it is concentrated and put up in tin canisters, or when even pure spring water is run through leaden pipes for convenience and economy, it may be worse than eating tainted suet, or drinking, as the cattle do, from the marshes.

So it is, that even under pretence of being God's truth, adulterations, manufactured and sealed up with lead, tin, arsenic, glucose, and what not, fill the mar

ket. And still the manufacturers and market men say the genuine is contained in them; so we have only to eat the whole without question for conscience' sake, and so truth will somehow be taken up into the system. Aye, but the stomach that has to receive. them cannot distinguish nor filter them, nor act as quarantine against the plague in them. That duty must be performed by the mind, the will, the watchful faith in Jesus only, and his Word, the integrity and jealousy of the praying and believing soul, over the whole body.

Well, said John, and what became of those poor fellows? Did any of them ever get back to tell the manner of their shipwreck?

Indeed some of them did, said Peter, and the whole country turned out to receive them, for it was like men rising from the dead. If Sir John Franklin had been found alive, it could not have been more remarkable.

The men on that expedition to find an open channel, being thus sick and weak and starving, and the cold weather gradually freezing them to death, had to put their remaining provisions, with their boats, on five sledges, and leaving their ship forever locked up in ice, could only take one sled forward at a time, with all the hands that were left; so that they had to go over the road thirteen times, and walk about twenty-six miles to advance two. For the ice kept

drifting all the while, and went North faster than they could travel South.

Still they did not give up all for lost, but heroically persevered, even against despair, as long as life and motion remained in them. And what will not men undergo, to save life, to escape death by shipwreck, starving, freezing? They will kill themselves with overwork and exhaustion, before they will yield themselves to despair, and lie down and die.

Now something such, and so terrible, are the consequences of our departures from God and his Word, and the heedless habits and adventures of our depravity, the perils and poisonings and living deaths in it. And then, when we would return to God, from whom we have so long wandered into sin and darkness, to think of the extremities of persevering effort to recover ourselves, before we are willing to trust all to Jesus Christ our only Saviour; so that, with all our diligence, we accomplish no more than two miles from dragging our own sleds twenty-six, and going over the road thirteen times!

But with all this, there is this divine Consolation, that in all true spiritual efforts to escape sin and death, and the realities of eternal perdition, though in all our weakness and fear and trembling, from the effects of long poisonings in evil habits of heart and life, we seem for many weary days and months of