iations from the plain straight path, and give no heed to the
seductions that lie on either side, but 'whereunto we have already
attained, by _the same_ let us walk.'

There are temptations, too, to slacken our speed. The river runs far
more slowly in its latter course than when it came babbling and leaping
down the hillside. And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept
rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen country, which
move so slowly that you cannot tell which way the water is flowing. Are
not there all round us, are there not amongst ourselves instances of
checked growth, of arrested development? There are people listening to
me now, calling themselves--and I do not say that they have not a right
to do so--Christians, who have not grown a bit for years, but stand at
the very same point of attainment, both in knowledge and in purity and
Christlikeness, as they were many, many days ago. I beseech you, listen
to this exhortation of my text, 'Whereunto we have already attained, by
the same let us walk,' and continue patient and persistent in the course
that is set before us.

III. The Apostle's injunction may be cast into this form, Be yourselves.

The representation which underlies my text, and precedes it in the
context, is that of the Christian community as a great body of
travellers all upon one road, all with their faces turned in one
direction, but at very different points on the path. The difference of
position necessarily involves a difference in outlook. They see their
duties, and they see the Word of God, in some respects diversely. And
the Apostle's exhortation is: 'Let each man follow his own insight, and
whereunto he has attained, by that, and not by his brother's attainment,
by that let him walk.' From the very fact of the diversity of
advancement there follows the plain duty for each of us to use our own
eyesight, and of independent faithfulness to our own measure of light,
as the guide which we are bound to follow.

There is a dreadful want, in the ordinary Christian life, of any
appearance of first-hand communication with Jesus Christ, and daring to
be myself, and to act on the insight into His will which Christ has
given _me_.

Conventional Godliness, Christian people cut after one pattern, a little
narrow round of certain statutory duties and obligations, a parrot-like
repetition of certain words, a mechanical copying of certain methods of
life, an oppressive sameness, ma