orted heart will be a stable heart. Our fixedness
and stability are not natural immobility, but communicated
steadfastness. There must be, first, the consolation of Christ before
there can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know how
vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of passion and winds of
doctrine and forces of earth our resolutions and spirits are. But
thistledown glued to a firm surface will be firm, and any light thing
lashed to a solid one will be solid; and reeds shaken with the wind may
be turned into brazen pillars that cannot be moved. If we have Christ in
our hearts, He will be our consolation first and our stability next. Why
should it be that we are spasmodic and fluctuating, and the slaves of
ups and downs, like some barometer in stormy weather; now at 'set
fair,' and then away down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need
for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury will always stand
at one height. Why should it be that at one hour the flashing waters
fill the harbour, and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze
and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like some landlocked lake
that knows no tide. 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'

The comforted and stable heart will be a fruitful heart. 'In _every_
good word and work.' Ah! how fragmentary is our goodness, like the
broken torsos of the statues of fair gods dug up in some classic land.
There is no reason why each of us should not appropriate and make our
own the forms of goodness to which we are least naturally inclined, and
cultivate and possess a symmetrical, fully-developed, all-round
goodness, in some humble measure after the pattern of Jesus Christ our
Lord. Practical righteousness, 'in every good word and work,' is the
outcome of all the sacred and secret consolations and blessings that
Jesus Christ imparts. There are many Christian people who are like those
swallow-holes, as they call them, characteristic of limestone countries,
where a great river plunges into a cave and is no more heard of. You do
not get your comforts and your blessing for that, brother, but in order
that all the joy and peace, all the calmness and the communion, which
you realise in the secret place of the Most High, may be translated into
goodness and manifest righteousness in the market-place and the street.
We get our goodness where we get our consolation, from Jesus Christ and
His Cross.

And so, dear friends, all your