are the fundamental bases of their lives,
in belief and aim and direction; and which yet are not strong enough
to master the whole of the life, and to manifest themselves through
it. Especially it is the condition of some Christian people. They
have a real faith, but it is of the feeblest and most rudimentary
kind. They are on the foundation, but their lives are interlaced with
the most heterogeneous mixty-maxty of good and evil, of lofty, high,
self-sacrificing thoughts and heavenward aspirations, of resolutions
never carried out into practice; and side by side with these there
shall be meannesses, selfishnesses, tempers, dispositions all
contradictory of the former impulses. One moment they are all fire
and love, the next moment ice and selfishness. One day they are all
for God, the next day all for the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Jacob sees the open heavens and the face of God and vows; to-morrow
he meets Laban and drops to shifty ways. Peter leaves all and follows
his Master, and in a little while the fervour has gone, and the fire
has died down into grey ashes, and a flippant servant-girl's tongue
leads him to say 'I know not the man.' 'Gold, silver, precious
stones,' and topping them, 'wood, hay, stubble!'

The inconsistencies of the Christian life are what my text, in the
application that I am venturing to make of it, suggests to us. Ah,
dear friends! we do not need to go to Jacob and Peter; let us look at
our own hearts, and if we will honestly examine one day of our lives,
I think we shall understand how it is possible for a man, on the
foundation, yet to build upon it these worthless and combustible
things, 'wood, hay, stubble.'

We are not to suppose that one man builds _only_ 'gold, silver,
precious stones.' There is none of us that does that. And we are not
to suppose that any man who _is_ on the foundations has so little
grasp of it, as that he builds _only_ 'wood, hay, stubble.'

There is none of us who has not intermingled his building, and there
is none of us, if we are Christians at all, who has not sometimes
laid a course of 'precious stones.' If your faith is doing _nothing_
for you except bringing to you a belief that you are not going to
hell when you die, then it is no faith at all. 'Faith without works
is dead.' So there is a mingling in the best, and--thank God!--there
is a mingling of good with evil, in the worst of real Christian
people.

II. Note here, the testing fire.

Paul poin