qually uninterrupted response to it in our grateful
affection. There can be no more damning condemnation of the
vacillations and fluctuations of Christian men's affections than the
steadfastness of Christ's love to them. He loves ever; He is
unalterable in the communication and effluence of His heart. Surely
it is most fitting that we should be steadfast in our devotion and
answering love to Him. And Paul means not only fixedness of
intellectual conviction and continuity of loving response, but also
habitual obedience, which is always ready to do His will.

So we should answer His 'Yea!' with our 'Amen!' and having an
unchanging Christ to rest upon, we should rest upon Him unchanging.
The broken, fluctuating affections and trusts and obediences which
mark so much of the average Christian life of this day are only too
sad proofs of how scant our possession of that Spirit of
steadfastness must be supposed to be. God's 'Yea' is answered by our
faltering 'Amen'; God's truth is hesitatingly accepted; God's love is
partially returned; God's work is slothfully and negligently done.
'Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the
Lord.'

Another thought is suggested by these words--viz. that such
steadfastness as we have been trying to describe has for its result a
deeper penetration into Jesus Christ and a fuller possession of Him.
The only way by which we can grow nearer and nearer to our Lord is by
steadfastly keeping beside Him. You cannot get the spirit of a
landscape unless you sit down and gaze, and let it soak into you. The
cheap tripper never sees the lake. You cannot get to know a man until
you summer and winter with him. No subject worth studying opens
itself to the hasty glance. Was it not Sir Isaac Newton who used to
say, 'I have no genius, but I keep a subject before me'? 'Abide in
Me; as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, no
more can ye except ye abide in Me.' Continuous, steadfast adhesion to
Him is the condition of growing up into His likeness, and receiving
more and more of His beauty into our waiting hearts. 'Wait on the
Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.'

III. Lastly, notice the very humble and commonplace sphere in which
the Christian steadfastness manifests itself.

It was nothing of more importance than that Paul had said he was
going to Corinth, and did not, on which he brings all this array of
great principles to bear. From which I gather just this thought, tha