to the cup. As evil
spirits were supposed to be cast out by the presence of an innocent
child or a pure virgin, so the ugly shapes that sometimes tempt us by
assuming fair disguises will be shown in their native hideousness when
confronted with a heart filled with the love of God.

Such keenness of judgment is capable of indefinite increase. Our
consciences should become more and more sensitive: we should always be
advancing in our discovery of our own evils, and be more conscious of
our sins, the fewer we have of them. Twilight in a chamber may reveal
some foul things, and the growing light will disclose more. 'Secret
faults' will cease to be secret when our love abounds more and more in
knowledge, and in all discernment.

II. The purity and completeness of character flowing from this keenness
of conscience.

The Apostle desires that the knowledge which he asks for his Philippian
friends may pass over into character, and he describes the sort of men
which he desires them to be in two clauses, 'sincere and void of
offence' being the one, 'filled with the fruits of righteousness' being
the other. The former is perhaps predominantly negative, the latter
positive. That which is sincere is so because when held up to the light
it shows no flaws, and that which is without offence is so because the
stones in the path have been cleared away by the power of
discrimination, so that there is no stumbling. The life which discerns
keenly will bring forth the fruit which consists of righteousness, and
that fruit is to fill the whole nature so that no part shall be without
it.

Nothing lower than this is the lofty standard towards which each
Christian life is to aim, and to which it can indefinitely approximate.
It is not enough to aim at the negative virtue of sincerity so that the
most searching scrutiny of the web of our lives shall detect no flaws
in the weaving, and no threads dropped or broken. There must also be the
actual presence of positive righteousness filling life in all its parts.
That lofty standard is pressed upon us by a solemn motive, 'unto the day
of Christ.' We are ever to keep before us the thought that in that
coming day all our works will be made manifest, and that all of them
should be done, so that when we have to give account of them we shall
not be ashamed.

The Apostle takes it for granted here that if the Philippian Christians
know what is right and what is wrong, they will immediately choose and
do