We are near an end, but before you depart, stand still a little, as Evangelist said to Christian, that I may show you the words of God.  And first, watch yourselves well, for you all have a large piece of this worldly-wise man in yourselves.  You all take something of some ancestor, remote or immediate, who was wise only for this world.  Yes, to be sure, for you still decline as they did, and desert as they did, those you deem to be the weakest, and stand with those that you suppose to be the strongest side. The Architect of Fortune is perhaps too strong meat for your stomach; but still, if you ever light upon its powerful pages, you will surely blush in secret to see yourself turned so completely inside out.  You may not have chosen your church wholly with an eye to your shop; but you must admit that you see as good and better men than you are doing that every day.  And it is a sure sign to you that you do not yet know the plague of your own heart, unless you know yourself to be a man more set upon the position and the praise that this world gives than you yet are on the position and the praise that come from God only.  Set a watch on your own worldly heart.  Watch and pray, lest you also enter into all Worldly-Wiseman’s temptation.  This is one of the words of God to you.

Another word of God is this.  The way of the cross, said severe Evangelist, is odious to every worldly-wise man; while, all the time, it is the only way there is, and there never will be any other way to eternal life.  The only way to life is the way of the cross.  There are two crosses, indeed, on the way to the Celestial City; there is, first, the Cross of Christ, once for you, and then there is your cross daily for Christ, and it takes both crosses to secure and to assure any man that he is on the right road, and that he will come at last to the right end.  ‘The Christian’s great conquest over the world,’ says William Law, ’is all contained in the mystery of Christ upon the cross.  And true Christianity is nothing else but an entire and absolute conformity to that spirit which Christ showed in the mysterious sacrifice of Himself upon the cross.  Every man is only so far a Christian as he partakes of this same spirit of Christ—­the same suffering spirit, the same sacrifice of himself, the same renunciation of the world, the same humility and meekness, the same patient bearing of injuries, reproaches, and contempts, the same dying to all the greatness, honours, and happiness of this world that Christ showed on the cross.  We also are to suffer, to be crucified, to die, to rise with Christ, or else His crucifixion, His death, and His resurrection will profit us nothing.  ’This is the second word of God unto thee.  And the third thing to-night is this, that though thy sin be very great, though thou hast a past life round thy neck enough to sink thee for ever out of the sight of God and all good men; a youth of sensuality now long and closely cloaked