t to
fervour and earnestness, and thus will deliver him from the
temptations to languid and perfunctory work that ever creep over us.

You can carry that motive--as we all know, and as we all forget when
the pinch comes--into your shop, your study, your office, your mill,
your kitchen, or wherever you go. 'On the bells of the horses there
shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,' said the prophet, and 'every
bowl in Jerusalem' may be sacred as the vessels of the altar. All
life may flash into beauty, and tower into greatness, and be smoothed
out into easiness, and the crooked things may be made straight and
the rough places plain, and the familiar and the trite be invested
with freshness and wonder as of a dream, if only we write over them,
'For the sake of the Master.' Then, whatever we do or bear, be it
common, insignificant, or unpleasant, will change its aspect, and all
will be sweet. Here is the secret of diligence and of fervency, 'I
set the Lord always before me.'

ANOTHER TRIPLET OF GRACES

'Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing
instant in prayer.'--ROMANS xii. 12.

These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, in the
midst of that outline of the Christian life with which the Apostle
begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he omits in this
sketch of Christian duty seems to me quite as significant as what he
inserts. It is very remarkable that in the twenty verses devoted to
this subject, this is the only one which refers to the inner secrets
of the Christian life. Paul's notion of 'deepening the spiritual
life' was 'Behave yourself better in your relation to other people.'
So all the rest of this chapter is devoted to inculcating our duties
to one another. Conduct is all-important. An orthodox creed is
valuable if it influences action, but not otherwise. Devout emotion
is valuable, if it drives the wheels of life, but not otherwise.
Christians should make efforts to attain to clear views and warm
feelings, but the outcome and final test of both is a daily life of
visible imitation of Jesus. The deepening of spiritual life should be
manifested by completer, practical righteousness in the market-place
and the street and the house, which non-Christians will acknowledge.

But now, with regard to these three specific exhortations here, I
wish to try to bring out their connection as well as the force of
each of them.

I. So I remark first, that the Chri