p the boiling pollutions of
his own heart from extinguishing that spark! Well may Paul exclaim: Yea,
what carefulness it calls forth in us; yea, what indignation; yea, what
fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea, what revenge! And,
knowing to what He has left our hearts, well may Emmanuel say to us from
His ascending steps, 'Watch ye, therefore; and what I say unto you, I say
unto all, Watch!'

3. It is to keep thee watchful and to teach thee war also, the Prince
went on. Bishop Butler is about the last author that we would think of
going to for light on any deep and intricate question in the evangelical
and experimental life. But Butler is so deeply seen into much of the
heart of man, as also into many of the ways of God, that even here he has
something to say to the point. 'It is vain to object,' he says in his
sober and sobering way, 'that all this trouble and danger might have been
saved us by our being made at once the creatures and the characters which
we were to be. For we experience that what we are to be is to be the
effect of what we shall do. And that the conduct of nature is not to
save us trouble and danger, but to make us capable of going through
trouble and danger, and to put it upon us to do it.' The Apostle Peter
has the same teaching in a passage too little attended to, in which he
tells us that we are set here to work out our own salvation, and that our
salvation will just be what, with fear and trembling, or, as Butler says,
with trouble and danger, we work out. No man, let all men understand, is
to have his salvation thrust upon him. No man need expect to waken up at
the end of an idle, indifferent, inattentive life and find his salvation
superinduced upon all that. No man shall wear the crown of everlasting
life who has not for himself won it. As every man soweth to the Spirit
so also shall he reap. As a soldier warreth, so shall he hear it said to
him, Well done. And as a sinner keeps his heart with all diligence, and
holds it fast till his King comes, so shall he hear it said to him, Thou
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things. If thy sins, then, are left in thee to teach thee war, O poor
saint of God, then take to thee the whole armour of God; thou knowest the
pieces of it, and where the armoury is, and, having done all, stand!

4. And dost thou know, O Mansoul, that it is all to try thy love also?
Now, how, just how, do the r