next to gratitude with humility.  Men differ, good men differ, and Emmanuel’s livery-men differ in what they put on, at what time, and in what order.  But that was William Law’s way.  You will learn more of his way, and you will be helped to find out a like way for yourselves, if you will become students of his incomparable books.  You will find how he put on charity, 1 Cor. thirteenth chapter; and then how, over all, he put on the will of God; till, thus equipped and thus accoutred, he was able to say, as it has seldom been said since it was first said, ’I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was to me as a robe and as a diadem.  The Almighty was then with me, and my children were about me.  When I washed my steps with butter, and when the rock poured me out rivers of oil!’ So much for that livery-man of Emmanuel, the author of the Christian Perfection and the Spirit of Love.  As for the women’s vestry in the Interpreter’s House, Matthew Henry saw the thirty-first chapter of the Proverbs hung up on that vestry wall, and Christiana making her morning toilet before it with Mercy beside her.  Who would find a virtuous woman, let him look before that looking-glass for her, and he will be sure to find her and her daughters and her daughters-in-law putting on their white raiment there.

2.  ’Secondly, keep your garments always white; for if they be soiled, it is a dishonour to Me.  I have a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.’  Even in Sardis, with every street and every house full of soil and dishonour to the name of Christ, even in Sardis Emmanuel had some of whom He could boast Himself.  Would you not immensely like at the last day to be one of those some in Sardis?  Shall it not be splendid when Sardis comes up for judgment to be among those few names that Emmanuel shall then read out of His book, and when, at their few names, two or three men shall step out into the light in His livery?  Some of you are in Sardis at this moment.  Some of you are in a city, or in a house in a city, where it is impossible to keep your garments clean.  And yet, no; nothing is impossible to Emmanuel and His true livery-men.  Even in that house where you are, Emmanuel will say over you, I have one there who is thankful to My Father and to Me; thankful to singing every morning where there is little, as men see, to sing for.  There is one in that house humble, where humility itself would almost become high-minded.  And meek, where Moses himself would have lost his temper.  And submissive, where rebelliousness would not have been without excuse.  Mark these few men for Mine, says Emmanuel.  Mark them with the inkhorn for Mine.  For they shall surely be Mine in that day, and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.