money-making, or about other objects of
earthly ambition, or about the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the
eye, and the pride of life, to do in heaven? What would one of those
fishes in the sunless caverns of America, which, by long living in the
dark, have lost their eyes, do, if it were brought out into the
sunshine? A man will go to his own place, the place for which he is
fitted, the place for which he has fitted himself by his daily life, and
especially by the trend and the direction of his thoughts.

So do not be led away by talk about 'seeing both sides,' about 'seeing
life,' about 'knowing what is going on.' 'I would have you simple
concerning evil, and wise concerning good.' Do not be led away by talk
about having your fling, and sowing your wild oats. You may make an
indelible stain on your conscience, which even forgiveness will not wipe
out; and you may sow your wild oats, but what will the harvest be?
'Whatsoever a man soweth that'--_that_--'shall he also reap.' Would you
like all your low thoughts, all your foul thoughts, to return and sit
down beside you, and say, 'We have come to keep you company for ever'?
'If there be any virtue . . . think on these things.'

III. Now, lastly, _how_ is this precept best obeyed?

I have been speaking to some extent about that, and saying that there
must be real, honest, continuous effort to keep out the opposite, as
well as to bring in the 'things that are lovely and of good report.' But
there is one more word that I must say in answer to the question how
this precept can be observed, and it is just this. All these things,
true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, are not things
only; they are embodied in a Person. For whatever things are fair meet
in Jesus Christ, and He, in His living self, is the sum of all virtue
and of all praise. So that if we link ourselves to Him by faith and
love, and take Him into our hearts and minds, and abide in Him, we have
them all gathered together into that One. Thinking on these things is
not merely a meditating upon abstractions, but it is clutching and
living in and with and by the living, loving Lord and Saviour of us all.
If Christ is in my thoughts, all good things are there.

If you trust Him, and make him your Companion, He will help you, He will
give you His own life, and in it will give you tastes and desires which
will make all these fair thoughts congenial to you, and will deliver you
from the else hop