in occupations legitimate and necessary, in enjoyments
which are in themselves pure and innocent, in family delights, in home
engagements, in pursuits of commerce or of daily business--all that
crowd of things that tempt us to forget the true grace and to wander
away in a foolish and vain search after vain and foolish substitutes.

Dear brethren, it is not so much because there are many adversaries in
the intellectual world as because we are such weak creatures ourselves,
and the world around us is so strong against us, that we need to say to
one another and to ourselves, over and over again, 'Stand ye fast
therein.' You cannot keep hold of a rope even, without the act of
grasping tending to relax, and there must be a conscious and repeated
tightening up of the muscles, or the very cord on which we hang for
safety will slip through our relaxed palms. And however we may be
convinced that there are no hope and no true blessedness for us except
in keeping hold of God, we need that grasp to be tightened up by daily
renewed efforts, or else it will certainly become slack, and we shall
lose the thing that we should hold fast. So my text exhorts us against
ourselves, and against the temptations of the world, which are always
present with us, and are far more operative in bringing down the
temperature of the Christian Church, and of its individual members,
than any chilling that arises from intellectual doubts.

And how are we to obey the exhortation? Well, plainly, if 'this' is the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, 'the true grace of God' which alone
will give stability to our feet, then we 'shall not stand fast' in it
unless we make conscious efforts to apprehend, and comprehend, and keep
hold of it in our minds as well as in our hearts. May I say one very
plain word? I am very much afraid that people do not read their Bibles
very much now (or if they do read them, they do not study them), and
that anything like an intelligent familiarity with the whole sweep of
the great system (for it is a system) of Divine truth, evolved 'at
sundry times and in divers manners' in this Word, is a very rare thing
amongst even good people. They listen to sermons, with more or less
attention; they read newspapers, no doubt; they read good little books,
and magazines, and the like; and volumes that profess to be drawn from
Scripture. These are all right and good in their place. But sure I am
that a robust and firm grasp of the gospel, 'which