vely to
intellectual adherence to the truths spoken in the Gospel. It covers
the whole ground of the whole man; will, conscience, heart, practical
effort, as well as understanding. And it is really Paul's version, with
a characteristic dash of pugnacity in it, of our Lord's yet deeper and
calmer words, 'Abide in Me and I in you.' It is the same exhortation as
Barnabas gave to the infantile church at Antioch, when, to these men
just rescued from heathenism and profoundly ignorant of much which we
suppose it absolutely necessary that Christians should know, he had only
one thing to say, exhorting them all, that 'with purpose of heart they
should cleave to the Lord.'

Steadfast continuance of personal union with Jesus Christ, extending
through all the faculties of our nature, and into every corner of our
lives, is the kernel of this great exhortation. And he who fulfils it
has little left unfulfilled. Of course, as I said, there is a very
strong suggestion that such 'standing' is by no means an easy thing, or
accomplished without much antagonism; and it may help us if, just for a
moment, we run over the various forms of resistance which they have to
overcome who stand fast. Nothing stands where it is without effort. That
is true in the moral world, although in the physical world the law of
motion is that nothing moves without force being applied to it.

What are the things that would shake our steadfastness, and sweep us
away? Well, there are, first, the tiny, continuously acting, and
therefore all but omnipotent forces of daily life--duties, occupations,
distractions of various kinds--which tend to move us imperceptibly away,
as by the slow sliding of a glacier, from the hope of the Gospel. There
is nothing so strong as a gentle pressure, equably and unintermittently
applied. It is far mightier than thrusts and hammerings and sudden
assaults. I stood some time ago looking at the Sphinx. The hard
stone--so hard that it turns the edge of a sculptor's chisel--has been
worn away, and the solemn features all but obliterated. What by? The
continual attrition of multitudinous grains of sand from the desert. The
little things that are always at work upon us are the things that have
most power to sweep us away from our steadfastness in Jesus Christ.

Then there are, besides, the sudden assaults of strong temptations, of
sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and refined character. If a man is
standing loosely, in some careless _de