policy.'
Deceit is always a losing game. A lie is sure to be found out; as
the Lord Jesus Himself says, 'There is nothing hid which shall not
be made manifest;' and what we do in secret, is sure, unless we
repent and amend it, to be proclaimed on the housetop: and many a
poor soul, in her haste and greediness to get much, ends by getting
nothing at all. And if it were not so;--if you were able to deceive
any human being out of the riches of the world: yet know, that a
man's life does _not_ consist in the abundance of the things which
he possesses. And know that if you will not believe that,--if you
will fancy that your business is to get all you can for your mortal
bodies, by fair means or foul,--if you will fancy that you are thus
debtors to your own flesh, you will surely die: but if you, through
the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.

And by this time some of you are asking, 'Live? Die? What does all
this mean? When we die we shall die, good or bad; and in the
meantime we shall live till we die. And you do not mean to tell us
that we shall shorten our lives by our own tempers, or our tale-
bearing, though we might, perhaps, by drunkenness?'

My friends, if such a question rises in your mind, be sure that it,
too, is a hint that you think yourself a debtor to the flesh--to
live according to the flesh. For tell me, tell yourselves fairly,
is your flesh, your body, the part of yourself which you can see and
handle, _You_?--You know that it is not. When a neighbour's body
dies, you say, perhaps, '_He_ is dead,' but you say it carelessly;
and when one whom you know well, and love, dies,--when a parent, a
wife, a child, dies, you feel very differently about them, even if
you do not speak differently. You feel and know that he, the person
whom you loved and understood, and felt with, and felt for, here on
earth, is not dead at all; you feel (and in proportion as the friend
you have lost was loving, and good, and full of feeling for you, you
feel it all the more strongly) that your friend, or your child, or
the wife of your bosom, is alive still--where you know not, but you
feel they are alive; that they are very near you;--that they are
thinking of you, watching you, caring for you,--perhaps grieving
over you when you go wrong--perhaps rejoicing over you when you go
right,--perhaps helping you, though you cannot see them, in some
wonderful way. You know that only their mortal flesh is