itself, but when it is opened it admits the guest. So do you let that
Master come and abide, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said of
old, 'Child! My grace is sufficient.' How modest He is. Sufficient!--an
ocean _enough_ to fill a thimble! 'My grace is sufficient for thee; and
My strength is made perfect in weakness.'

III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be
exercised, and the victory which it secures. 'Ye have overcome the
wicked one.'

There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict
with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the
embattled legions of the darkness, whom the New Testament has more
clearly revealed to us. You young people have many advantages in the
conflict; you have some special disadvantages as well. You have strong
passions, you have not much experience, you do not know how bitter the
dregs are of the cup whose foaming bubbles look so attractive, and whose
upper inch tastes so sweet. But on the other hand you have not yet
contracted habits that it is misery to indulge in, and, as it would
seem, impossible to break, and the world is yet before you.

You cannot begin too soon to choose your side. And here is the side on
which alone victory is possible for a man--the side of Jesus Christ, who
will teach your hands to war and your fingers to fight.

Notice that remarkable phrase, 'Ye have overcome the wicked one.' He is
talking to young Christians before whom the battle may seem to lie, and
yet He speaks of their conquest as an accomplished fact, and as a thing
behind them. What does that mean? It means this, that if you will take
service in Christ's army, and by His grace resolve to be His faithful
soldier till your life's end, that act of faith, which enrols you as
His, is itself the victory which guarantees, if it be continued, the
whole conquest in time.

There used to be an old superstition that--

'Who sheds the foremost foeman's life
His party conquers in the strife';

and whosoever has exercised, however imperfectly and feebly, the faith
in Jesus Christ the Lord has therein conquered the devil and all his
works, and Satan is henceforth a beaten Satan, and the battle, in
essence, is completed even in the act of its being begun.

'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'; not
only because our confidence in Jesus Christ is the blowing of the bugle
that summons to warfare and shakes off th