3.  ‘I was always pleased,’ says Calvin, ’with that saying of Chrysostom, “The foundation of our philosophy is humility”; and yet more pleased with that of Augustine:  “As,” says he, “the rhetorician being asked, What was the first thing in the rules of eloquence? he answered, Pronunciation; what was the second?  Pronunciation; what was the third? and still he answered, Pronunciation.  So if you would ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, I would answer, firstly, secondly, thirdly, and for ever, Humility."’ And when Ill-pause opened his elocutionary school for the young orators of hell, he is reported to have said this to them in his opening address, ‘There are only three things in my school,’ he said; ’three rules, and no more to be called rules.  The first is Delay, the second is Delay, and the third is Delay.  Study the art of delay, my sons; make all your studies to tell on how to make the fools delay.  Only get those to whom your master sends you to delay, and you will not need to envy me my laurels; you will soon have a shining crown of your own.  Get the father to delay teaching his little boy how to pray.  Get him on any pretext you can invent to put off speaking in private to his son about his soul.  Get him to delegate all that to the minister.  And then by hook or by crook get that son as he grows up to put off the Lord’s Supper.  And after that you will easily get him to put off purity and prayer till he is a married man and at the head of a house.  Only get the idea of a more convenient season well into their heads, and their game is up, and your spurs are won.  Take their arm in yours, as I used to do, at their church door, if you are posted there, and say to them as they come out that to-morrow will be time enough to give what they had thought of giving while they were still in their pew and the minister or missionary was still in the pulpit.  Only, as you value your master’s praises and the applause of all this place, keep them, at any cost, from striking while the iron is hot.  Let them fill their hearts, and their mouths too, if it gives them any comfort, with the best intentions; only, my scholars, remember that the beginning and middle and end of your office is by hook or by crook to secure delay.’  And a great crop of young orators sprang up ready for their work under that teaching and out of the persuasionary school of Ill-pause.  In fine, Mansoul desired some time in which to prepare its answer.’

There are many men among ourselves who have been bedevilled out of their best life, out of the salvation of their souls, and out of all that constitutes and accompanies salvation now for many years.  And still their sin-deceived hearts are saying to them to-night, Take time!  For many years, every new year, every birthday, and, for a long time, every Communion-day, they were just about to be done with their besetting sin; and now all the years lie behind them, one long downward road all paved, down to this Sabbath night,