upation, it is
the _gymnasium_ where God has put us to exercise our muscles in, and so
to gain 'the wrestling thews that throw the world.' 'Be strong in the
Lord, and in the power of His might.' The concentration for which I
plead does not shut us out from any place but the devil's
wrestling-ground. All that is legitimate, all that is innocent, may be
made a means for manifesting and for increasing our godliness. Only you
have to take God with you into your life, and to try, more and more
consciously, to make Him the motive-power of all that you do. Then the
old saying which is profoundly true as it was originally meant, and has
of late years been so misused as to become profoundly false, will be
true again, '_Laborare est orare_.' Yes! it is; if worship underlies the
work, but not else.

Again I say, exercise yourselves by abstinence. How many things did the
athlete at Corinth do without in his training? How many things do
prizefighters and rowing men do without when in training to-day? How
rigidly, for a while at any rate, they abstain--whether they recompense
themselves afterwards or not has nothing to do with my present purpose.
And is it not a shame that some sensual man shall, for the sake of
winning a medal or a cup, be able gladly to abandon the delights of
sense--eating, drinking, and the like--and content himself with a
hermit's Spartan fare, and that Christian people so seldom, and so
reluctantly, and so partially turn away from the poisoned cups and the
indigestible dainties which the world provides for them? I think that
any Christian man who complains of the things which he is shut out from
doing if he is to cultivate the godliness which should be his life need
only go to any place where horse-jockeys congregate to get a lesson that
he may well lay to heart. 'Exercise thyself,' for it is unto godliness.

And then what I said in a former part of this sermon about the various
stages of religion may suggest another view of the method of discipline
proper to the Christian life. The strenuous exercise of all our powers
is called for. But if it is true that the godliness of my text is the
last outcome of the emotions which spring from the reception of certain
truths, then if we work backwards, as it were, we shall get the best way
of producing the godliness. That is to say, the main effort for all men
who are in earnest in regard to their own growth in Christlikeness is to
keep themselves in touch with the trut