ldren's children, and peace
upon thy native land.

Oh, remember how God fulfilled that promise to England seventy years ago,
when the French swept in fire and slaughter, and horrors worse than
either, over almost every nation in Europe, while England remained safe
in peace and plenty, and an enemy never set foot on God's chosen English
soil. Remember the French war, and our salvation in it, and then believe
and take comfort. Trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the
land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

VII. HIGHER OR LOWER: WHICH SHALL WIN?

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after
the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye
through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye
have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father."--ROMANS viii. 12-15.

Let us try to understand these words. They are of quite infinite
importance to us all.

We shall all agree, all of us at least who have thought at all about
right and wrong, and tried to do right and avoid wrong--that there goes
on in us, at times, a strange struggle. We wish to do a right thing, and
at the very same time long to do a wrong one. We are pulled, as it were,
two different ways by two different feelings, feel as if we were two men
at once, a better man and a worse man struggling for the mastery. One
may conquer, or the other. We may be like the confirmed drunkard who
cannot help draining off his liquor, though he knows that it is going to
kill him; or we may be like the man who conquers his love for drink, and
puts the liquor away, because he knows that he ought not to take it.

We know too well, many of us, how painful this inward struggle is,
between our better selves, and our worse selves. How discontented with
ourselves it makes us, how ashamed of ourselves, how angry with
ourselves. We all understand too well--or ought to understand, St.
Paul's words: How often the good which he wished to do, he did not do,
but the evil which he did not wish to do, he did. How he delighted in
the law of God in his inward man; but he found another law in him, in his
body, warring against the law of his mind--that is his conscience and
reason, and making a slave of him till he was ready at times to cry