Again to the Sermon on the Mount.  I told you a while ago that this sermon sets forth the living way, or the living Christ.  All the parables and miracles aim at nothing higher than to prepare the minds and hearts of the people to do, in an enlightened way, the things commanded and taught in that wonderful sermon.  Obedience to all the ordinances of God’s house is but a showing to the life and in the life that meekness, that state of heart purity, that forgiveness, that charity or brotherly love, that heavenly mindedness, which shine forth in clear light there.  But all the good there is in that sermon consists in the doing of it.  I may think of loving my enemy, and of praying for him, and of forgiving him, but will the thought avail anything, unless I carry my thought out in the acts of my life?  Our Lord prayed for his enemies even on the cross.  They had nailed him there, so unjustly too; but in the anguish of his distress he said:  “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”

One thought more, and I will close.  We must not forget that the Lord, by his Holy Spirit, is the life of the way.  Of ourselves, and left to ourselves, we could never enter the way.  Without the Lord’s power in us through his Holy Spirit we can do nothing.  This great truth in its fullness, accepted and believed in the heart, is the highest attainment in faith that man is capable of.  The deeper and warmer our love for the Lord is, the clearer and stronger our faith grows; and the clearer and stronger our faith is in him, the firmer are our assurances that he is our life.  We feel so free, so at liberty to do just what we will, either good or bad, that the truth of our absolute dependence upon God for every good affection and thought, for every good motive and its attainment, is a lesson we are slow to learn.  Peter had not learned this lesson when, confident in his own strength, he declared that he would not forsake the Lord.  It is this sense of our own weakness that leads us to pray.  Prayer must proceed from the heart.  Otherwise it is not prayer, but a mere form of words.  The Lord will never help any one spiritually who does not feel the need of divine help.  Saul was struck down when the divine light flashed upon him with a radiance above the brightness of the sun; but that light only blinded him.  The Lord then sent Ananias to inquire in the house of Judas in Damascus for one called Saul of Tarsus:  “For,” said he, “behold he prayeth.”  Without this prayer Saul would nevermore have seen anything.  This prayer was the opening of his heart to do the will of the Lord, for in it he said:  “Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?” I need only add here that the very first thing he was commanded to do was:  “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”

SUNDAY, November 5.  The two brethren had meeting at Isaac Shobe’s and stayed all night at Jacob Bargdoll’s.  On

MONDAY, November 6, they had morning meeting at Isaac Dasher’s, and night meeting at Nimrod Judy’s, where they stay all night.