ave hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable._"
(1 Cor. xv. 19.) But rise to a higher level. Get up into the mountain,
and survey the horizon of a wider world. Search into the nature of man's
true well-being, and see where the springs of it rise. Measure the range
of man's existence, the endless ages of his being, the boundless faculty
of joy or sorrow, of bliss or anguish, that claims eternity as its time.
Above all, measure the stature of a man. Study the image after which he
is fashioned, the godlike form he wears, the godlike experience he is
made to fathom, and the kind of satisfaction which his godlike powers
demand, robbed of which they hunger and pine and fill him at last with
madness and despair; so shall you comprehend more fully the grandeur and
the glory of his Christian vocation--sharing the conflict, the toil, the
sorrow, the joy, and the triumph of hisever God. Then lay aside "every
weight and the sin that doth so easily beset you." That sin is poverty
of faith--a poor-spirited estimate of life, its experiences and its
issues; a love for the serfdom of Egypt rather than the freedom of the
wilderness, the fleshpots of Goshen rather than the bread of Canaan, the
pleasure of the moment rather than the joy which springs from fountains
that outlast eternity.

The sin which doth so easily beset us. Want of faith.

I. In ourselves. II. In God. III. In the future.

I. Want of faith in ourselves--poor, base views of our nature, power,
and destiny.

The essential dignity of man's nature, as God constituted it, and the
utter debasement it has suffered through sin, are facts which in nowise
clash or contradict each other. In truth, no man who has not faith
enough to comprehend what "_power to become the sons of God_" may mean,
as spoken of man, can enter into the depth of anguish and shame wrung
out in the confession, "_I was as a beast before thee._" "_I have heard
of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee;
wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes._" At the root
of the humiliation, the debasement, lies this want of faith in our
higher being and destiny. We prefer the slave's portion, with the
slave's security, to the cares and burdens of freedom, with its hopes
and joys. The main difficulty in the emancipation of serfs arises always
from themselves. They do not care, nay they fear, to be free. The
responsibility of self-government and self-control is a burden from
whi