the whole surface with rapidity.  If we do not eject Evil it will eject the good from us.  Use the implanted power to cast out this creeping, advancing evil.  Sometimes a wine-grower has gone into his cellars, and found in a cask no wine, but a monstrous fungus into which all the wine had, in the darkness, passed unnoticed.  I fear some Christian people, though they do not know it, have something like that going on in them.

It is possible for us all to keep this perpetual festival.  To live in, on, for, Jesus Christ will give us victory over enemies, burdens, sorrows, sins.  We may, if we will, dwell in a calm zone where no tempests rage, hear a perpetual strain of sweet music persisting through thunder peals of sorrow and suffering, and find a table spread for us in the presence of our enemies, at which we shall renew our strength for conflict, and whence we shall rise to fight the good fight a little longer, till we sit with Him at His table in His Kingdom, and ‘eat, and live for ever.’

FORMS VERSUS CHARACTER

   ’Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,
   but the keeping of the commandments of God.’—­1 COR. vii. 19.

   ’For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything,
   nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.’—­GAL. v. 6.

   ’For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision,
   but a new creature.’—­GAL. vi. 16 (R.V.).

The great controversy which embittered so much of Paul’s life, and marred so much of his activity, turned upon the question whether a heathen man could come into the Church simply by the door of faith, or whether he must also go through the gate of circumcision.  We all know how Paul answered the question.  Time, which settles all controversies, has settled that one so thoroughly that it is impossible to revive any kind of interest in it; and it may seem to be a pure waste of time to talk about it.  But the principles that fought then are eternal, though the forms in which they manifest themselves vary with every varying age.

The Ritualist—­using that word in its broadest sense—­on the one hand, and the Puritan on the other, represent permanent tendencies of human nature; and we find to-day the old foes with new faces.  These three passages, which I have read, are Paul’s deliverance on the question of the comparative value of external rites and spiritual character.  They are remarkable both for the identity in the former part of each and for the variety in the latter.  In all the three cases he affirms, almost in the same language, that ’circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,’ that the Ritualist’s rite and the Puritan’s protest are equally insignificant in comparison with higher things.  And then he varies the statement of what the higher things are, in a very remarkable and instructive fashion.  The ‘keeping of the commandments of God,’ says one of the texts, is the all-important matter.  Then, as it were, he pierces deeper, and in another of the texts (I take the liberty of varying their order) pronounces that ‘a new creature’ is the all-important thing.  And then he pierces still deeper to the bottom of all, in the third text, and says the all-important thing is ‘faith which worketh by love.’