t is on such fields of open encounter for the Lord that muscle is
made, and the soul goes "from strength to strength," and "from glory to
glory."

My soul, art thou secretly ashamed of thy Lord? Art thou afraid to "lift
high His royal banner"? Then thou wilt always be as a feather-bed soldier,
and the trophies of the honourable war are not for thee. Stand out in the
open, and boldly testify, "As for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord!"

SEPTEMBER The Ninth

_DEALING WITH SIN_

PSALM xxxii.

Here is the burden of unconfessed sin. "_When I kept silence my bones
waxed old._" There is nothing brings on premature age like secret sin. It
keeps the mind in perpetual unrest, and a troubled mind soon makes the
body old. The real nourisher of the body is a quiet and radiant soul. But
let the soul be in chaos, and the body will soon be a ruin.

And here, too, is the healthy act of confession. "_I acknowledged my sin
unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid._" He retained no single germ
of the whole unclean brood. He brought them out into the light one by one,
as though he were emptying a noisome kennel. He brought them out, and
named them, in the awful Presence of the Lord.

And here is the ministry of forgiveness, and therefore the miracle of
restored health. Let me mark the rich variety of the descriptive words.
"_Forgiven!_" "_Covered!_" "_Imputed not!_" It is all removed and
obliterated, and the place of defilement and profanity becomes the holy
temple of the Lord.

SEPTEMBER The Tenth

_CRITICISM AND PIETY_

"_Thinkest thou, that judgest them that do such things,
that thou shalt escape?_"
--ROMANS ii. 1-11.

That is always my peril, to assume that by being severe with others I
exculpate myself. I go on to the bench, and deliver sentence upon my
brother, when my proper place is in the dock. And this is the subtlety of
the snare, that I regard my criticisms and condemnations of other people
as signs of my own innocence. This is the last refinement in temptation,
and multitudes fall before its power.

The way to moral and spiritual health is to direct my criticisms upon
myself. I must stand in the dock, and hear the grave indictment of my own
soul. Unless I pass through the second chapter of Romans I can never enter
the fifth and sixth, and still less the glorious forgiveness of the
eighth. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus." I pass into that warm, c