w an old alliance and now a
deep antipathy! How often the side we take even in the most momentous
matters is decided by the most unworthy motives and the most contemptible
considerations! Unstable as water, Reuben shall not excel. Double-minded
men, we, like Jacob's first-born, are unstable in all our ways. We have
no anchor, or, what anchor we sometimes have soon slips. We have no
fixed pole-star by which to steer our life. Any will-o'-the-wisp of
pleasure, or advantage, or praise will run us on the rocks. The
searchers of Mansoul, after long search, at last lighted on Anything, and
soon made an end of him. Seek him out in your own soul also. Be you
sure he is somewhere there. He is skulking somewhere there. And, having
found him, if you cannot on the spot make an end of him, keep your eye on
him, and never say that you are safe from him and his company as long as
you are in this soul-deceiving life. And, that Anything will not be let
enter the gates of the city you are set on seeking, that will go largely
to make that sweet and clean and truthful city your very heaven to you.

4. 'I am made all things to all men, and I please all men in all
things.' One would almost think that was Captain Anything himself, in a
frank, cynical, and self-censorious moment. But if you will look it up
you will see that it was a very different man. The words are the words
of Anything, but the heart behind the words is the heart of Paul. And
this, again, teaches us that we should be like the Messiah in this also,
not to judge after the sight of our eyes, nor to reprove after the
hearing of our ears. Miserable Anything! outcast alike of heaven and
hell! But, O noble and blessed Apostle! the man, says Thomas Goodwin,
who shall be found seated next to Jesus Christ Himself in the kingdom of
God. Happy Paul: happy even on this earth, since he could say, and in
the measure he could say with truth and with sincerity, such
self-revelations as these: 'Unto the Jews I am become as a Jew that I
might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law,
that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without
law, as without law, that I might gain them that are without law. To the
weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things
to all men, that I might by all means save some. Giving none offence,
neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God. Even
as I please