ot enough to
subdue his will and heart. How many of my hearers are in that condition
it is for them to settle. If we are to be Christian men at all, let us
be it out and out. Half-and-half religion is no religion.

'One foot in sea, and one on shore;
To one thing constant never!'

That is the type of thousands of professing Christians. 'I fear lest by
any means your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards
Christ.'

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that
it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My
grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is
made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore
will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the
power of Christ may rest upon me.'--2 COR. xii. 8,
9.

This very remarkable page in the autobiography of the Apostle shows us
that he, too, belonged to the great army of martyrs who, with hearts
bleeding and pierced through and through with a dart, yet did their work
for God. It is of little consequence what his thorn in the flesh may
have been. The original word suggests very much heavier sorrow than the
metaphor of 'a thorn' might imply. It really seems to mean not a tiny
bit of thorn that might lie half concealed in the finger tip, but one
of those hideous stakes on which the cruel punishment of impalement used
to be inflicted. And Paul's thought is, not that he has a little,
trivial trouble to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quivering
upon that tremendous torture.

Unquestionably, what he means is some bodily ailment or other. The
hypothesis that the 'thorn in the flesh' was the sting of the animal
nature inciting him to evil is altogether untenable, because such a
thorn could never have been left when the prayer for its removal was
earnestly presented; nor could it ever have been, when left, an occasion
for glorifying. Manifestly it was no weakness removable by his own
effort, no incapacity for service which in any manner approximated to
being a fault, but purely and simply some infliction from God's hand
(though likewise capable of being regarded as a 'messenger of Satan')
which hindered him in his work, and took down any proud flesh and danger
of spiritual exaltation in consequence of the largeness of his religious
privileges.

Our text sets before us three most instructive windings, as it were, of
the stream o