into your confidence, ask him to let you see his Bible and then let him see yours, and point out to him the rents and wounds and wilderness places in yours.  And thus, by these two uses of a clipped-up and half-empty Bible, you may make gains that shall yet set you above those whose Bibles of promises are still as fresh as when they came from God’s own hand.  And Samson said, I will now put forth a riddle unto you:  Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

3.  ‘Go out,’ said the Lord of Mansoul, ’and apprehend Clip-Promise and bring him before me.’  And they did so.  ’Go down to Edinburgh to-night, and go to the door of such and such a church, and, as he comes out arrest Clip-the-Commandments, for he has heard My word all this day again but will not do it.’  Where would you be by midnight if God rose up in anger and swore at this moment that your disobedient time should be no longer?  You would be speechless before such a charge, for the shears are in your pocket at this moment with which you have clipped to pieces this Sabbath-day:  shears red with the blood of the Fourth Commandment.  For, when did you rise off your bed this resurrection morning?  And what did you do when you did rise?  What has your reading and your conversation been this whole Lord’s day?  How full your heart would have been of faith and love and holiness by this time of night had you not despised the Lord of the Sabbath, and cast all His commandments and opportunities to you behind your back?  What private exercise have you had all day with your Father who sees in secret?  How often have you been on your knees, and where, and how long, and for what, and for whom?  What work of mercy have you done to-day, or determined to do to-morrow?  And so with all the divine commandments:  Mosaic and Christian, legal and evangelical.  Such as:  A tenth of all I have given to thee; a covenant with a wandering eye; a mouth once speaking evil, is it now well watched? not one vessel only, but all the vessels of thy body sanctified till every thought and imagination is well under the obedience of Christ.  Lest His anger for all that begin to burn to-night, make your bed with Eli and Samuel in His sanctuary to-night, lest the avenger of the blood of the commandments leap out on you in your sleep!

4.  The Old Serpent took with him the great shears of hell, and clipped ‘Thou shalt surely die’ out of the second chapter of Genesis.  And the same enemy of mankind will clip all the terror of the Lord out of your heart to-night again, if he can.  And he will do it in this way, if he can.  He will have some one at the church door ready and waiting for you.  As soon as the blessing is pronounced, some one will take you by the arm and will entertain you with the talk you love, or that you once loved, till you will be ashamed to confess that there is any terror or turning to God in your heart.  No!  Thou shalt not surely die, says the serpent still.  Why, hast thou not trampled Sabbaths and sermons past counting under thy feet?  What commandment, laid on body or soul, hast thou not broken, and thou art still adding drunkenness to thirst, and God doth not know!  ’The woman said unto the serpent, We may not eat of it, neither may we touch it, lest we die.  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.’