in pleasure, or whether he was engulfed in sorrow, that hound never lost the scent of his trail.

Still with unhurrying chase

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following feet,

And a voice above their beat

Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter me.

That is surely a grim figure which pictures conscience like a hound on the track of its prey, but terrible as the figure is, it is truthful, and it is only the assurance of the mercy of God that He will not permit us to be lulled to sleep long at a time concerning our responsibility for our sins.

In order to save ourselves from being thus deceived, we ought never to permit ourselves to blame any one else for our deeds. Nothing is more unwise than to allow children to lay their faults on any one else, even on the devil. Dr. Charles F. Deems tells the story of a child whom he knew-a child of strong character and strong passions who had paroxysms of rage. Her parents would sometimes tell her to open her mouth and let the bad spirit go

under the table. The child was growing into the belief that she was the innocent victim of an unseen being, who was another person, and she was learning to shift all the responsibility upon that person. A friend one day wisely taught her the fallacy of this; showed her that she was the only person responsible; that she herself was the bad spirit, and there was nothing to do but to have that spirit-namely, herselftotally changed. She went away by herself and prayed-prayed as David prayed when the conviction seized him that it was against God and God only that he had sinned. There was no third party in the transaction. From the hour the child had the conviction of her personal responsibility, she was a changed person. So must we all feel. We can never resist temptation as we should so long as we hold anybody else responsible for our sins.

IV

These sins for which we are personally responsible are those for which we must give an account at the great judgment. I

read not long ago a comment on the reference to what is called "The Book of Life" in the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelation. The writer declared that this suggested that each of our lives was an autobiography which we were daily and hourly writing. There is something very striking about that thought, for this Book of Life which each of us is writing in the deeds of every day has its transcript in the other world. Every act which men do here, and which they are responsible for doing, is known yonder. What John says about the book is figurative, of course. God forgets nothing, and so requires no actual records to remind Him. But there is a deep truth underlying such figures, which is apt to be overlooked. That truth is, that every act that we do here is known to the great Judge, and is recorded against us. You have seen those old-fashioned manifold writers. Possibly some of you use them yet in your places of business. The construction of them is this: a sheet of paper, a black carbon paper to be put in below it, and then another sheet on the other side, and the pen or pencil that writes on the

top surface, makes an impression that is carried through the black to the sheet below, and there is a duplicate which the writer keeps. So you and I upon this fleeting life are penning that which goes through the mysterious dark and is reproduced and docketed yonder. That is no fancy; it is a tremendous fact. Every day, every hour, every moment, we are writing, writing, writing our own biography, and God knows every word, every syllable, every letter that we put into it, better even than we know it ourselves.

My dear friends, what have you written there? Is there writing there that you dare not meet in the presence of the great white throne? Then, I pray you, now and here, bring your own sins to judgment by invoking the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ your Savior.

THE CONFLICT OF THE CENTURIES

"I will put enmity between thee and the woman.”— Gen. 3:15.

E have here the beginning of the mighty conflict of the ages.

All other wars that have curst the earth and have fattened on bloodshed and human anguish have been but phases of this agelong warfare. All other struggles have been evanescent and transitory; this has never ceased for an hour since the opening gun was fired in the Garden of Eden. The ages have counted themselves off by the century and by the thousand years; nations have been born and come into power and gone forth to conquest, and have in turn disintegrated and been broken in pieces that their fragments might build up still other nations; but this fight goes on, and must continue to go on, until man everywhere has been redeemed from the power of evil and has come to his rightful place as the ransomed son of God.