with God, had more power than all the men in Egypt apt from him. When they locked him into prison, they had to lock the Almighty in with him. You may suffer in the sight of the world, for a while; they may abuse you and say that you are a Pharisee. Never mind. Know that you are right, and be able to look up and see God smiling upon you. Oh, that God's dear people may learn the sweet lesson of separation! Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. Come out from them. "I will be your God, and I will walk with you," says Jehovah. I believe in my soul that the reason why so few of us have power with God and with man is because we are so near the world, and we are so much like it. Oh! that the Spirit may show us what it is to be separate, to-day, that we may know what it is to have God walk with us!

In the 8th chapter of John, it tells about a great many Christians that are groping in darkness; and I hear a great many persons say they feel just so. I will tell you the reason. You have got away from Christ. I contend that it is utterly impossible for any child of God to walk in the darkness who is following him. Why? Because he is the Light of the World. If you just get near him, you will have the light all around you. It is because people have got away from the light that they are groping in darkness. It is the privilege of every child of God to walk in an unclouded sun. If people would stop looking down at themselves, and would look up at Christ and keep looking at him, they would have peace and light and joy all the while. That is where you get those things. There is no light in ourselves; or if there is, it is borrowed light that comes from God. Christ is the Light of the World. He says: "If any man follow me, he shall not walk in darkness; he shall have the light of life."

When I was a little boy I used to try to catch my own shadow. I don't know whether any of you have been so foolish as that or not. I could not see why the shadow always kept ahead of me. Once I happened to be racing with my face to the sun, and I looked over my head and saw my shadow coming back of me; and it kept behind me all the way. It is the same with the Sun of Righteousness. Peace and joy will go with you while you go with your face toward

him.

Once I was trying to walk across the field after a fresh fall of snow. I would try and see how straight a line I could make with my footprints in the snow. When I looked around to see how straight I was going, I always walked crooked; but if I kept my eye on the mark ahead of me, and did not take it off, I could walk straight enough. So if Christians only kept their eyes on the mark-on Christ Jesus, and followed in his footsteps, not turning around to see what kind of a path they made-they would walk straighter. He is our model. If, instead of asking, Why can't I do this and that? Why can't I dance? Why can't I go to the theatre? Why

can't I read The New York Ledger? I don't see why I can't do it! Can you? Then put it in this way, What is the use of it? "Will it make me a better Christian?" If it won't, then I won't do them. Instead of asking, What is the use? and Why can't I? ask if it will be for the honor and glory of Jesus; and if it won't, say, I won't do it.

I do not see that we can have any better example than Christ himself. Just consult the Word of God, and see what Christ would do. You will find that God never makes a man do wrong. Who ever heard of a man backsliding who walked with God? God never backslides. If we are going to keep company with God, we have got to walk. God does not stand still, and does not run. You must grow in grace, or else in worldliness. Enoch walked with God. He found the right way, back there in that dim age. He was the most unpopular man in that time. If they had had him up for office, I don't think he would have got to be even so much as constable. God and he agreed very well, so that at last God said to him, "Come up here and walk with me." Old Dr. Bonner said, "Enoch started on a very long walk one day-he has not got back yet." It is sweet to walk with God. We walk the wilderness to-day, and the promised land to-morrow. Oh, that we all could say, "Father, take my hand,” and put our hands in his to-day. There is a difference between our having hold of God and his having hold of us. If God has hold of me, I cannot fall, can I? If the great God who created heaven and earth held us by the hand, what have we to fear? When my little girl was about three or four years old her mother got her a new muff, and then she wanted to go right out and take a walk with that muff. She teased me to go out walking with her. I told her I was tired, but after a while I got up and went with her. I said, "Emma, you had better let me take hold of your hand." She said, "No, I want to put my hands in my muff like mamma does." She was as proud as a peacock with the muff, and went strutting down the street. So a great many people start out with the idea that they are saved and can get along without the Word of God, but they find they need to have God hold them all the time. My little girl went alone for a minute, and by-and-by down she went. When she got up she said, "Papa, I wish you would let me take hold of your little finger;" but I said, "If you do, when your feet go from under you, you will let go and go down." She insisted on having my little finger, so I gave it to her. Pretty soon her little feet slipped from under her, and down she went again. Then when she got up she said, "Papa, I wish you would take my hand." So I took her little hand, and held it by the wrist. Her feet went out from under her a number of times after that; but she did not fall, because I held her. Oh, my friends let us learn the lesson to-day of separation from the world. Enoch walked with God, and God saved him. Abraham walked with God,

and God became his friend. Let us today out our hands in his as a friend, and take hold and walk with him.

LOVE.

"But if any man love God, the same is known of him." 1 CORINTHIANS 3: 8.

A few weeks ago we had for our subject, Love. I did not say upon that occasion all I wanted to upon that subject; and to-day I would like to continue it. Some one has said that the fruit of the Spirit is all in one word-" love." It speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, gentleness, long-suffering, meekness and temperance. The way this writer has put it-and I think it is very beautiful-is that joy is love exultant, peace is love in repose, and long-suffering is love enduring. It is all love, you see, and gentleness is love is society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love on the battle-field, and meekness is love at school, and temperance is love in training. Now there are a great many that have got love, and they hold the truth. I should have said they have got truth but they don't hold it in love; and they are very unsuccessful in working for God. They are very harsh, and God cannot use them. Now let us hold the truth, but let us hold it in love. People will stand almost any kind of plain talk, if you only do it in love. If you do it in harshnes it bounds back, and they won't receive it. So what we want is to have the truth, and at the same time hold it in love.

Then there is another class of people in the world that have got the truth; but they love so much that they give up the truth, because they are afraid it will hurt some one's feelings. That is wrong. We want the whole truth any way. We don't want to give it up but hold it in love; and I believe one reason why people think God don't love them is, because they have not this love. I met a lady in the inquiry-room to-day, and I could not convince her that God loved her; for she said if he did love her, he would not treat her as he had. And I believe people are all the time measuring God with their own rule, as I said the other day; and we are not sincere in our love, and we very often profess something we don't really possess. Very often we profess to have love for a person when we do not; and we think God is like us. Now God is just what he says he is, and he

wants his children to be sincere in love; not to love just merely in word and in tongue, but to love in earnest. That is what God does. You ask me why God loves. You might as well ask me why the sun shines. It can't help shining, and neither can he help loving, because he is love himself; and any one that says that he is not love, does not know anything about love himself. If we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts, we will show it in our life. We will not have to go up and down the earth proclaiming it; we will show it in everything we say or do.

There is a good deal of what you might call sham love. People profess to love you very much, when you find it is all on the surface. It is not heart love. Very often you are in a person's house, and the servant comes in and says such a person is in the front room; and she says: "Oh, dear, I am so sorry he has come; I can't bear the sight of him;" and she'll get right up and go into the other room, and say, "Why, how do you do? I am very glad to see you!" [Laughter.] There is a good deal of that sort of thing in the world. I remember, too, I was talking with a man one day, and an acquaintance of his came in; and he jumped up at once and shook him by the hand-why, I thought he was going to shake his hand out of joint, he shook so hard, and he seemed to be so glad to see him, and wanted him to stay, but the man was in a great hurry and could not stay, and he coaxed and urged him to stay, but the man said no, he would come another time; and after that man went out my companion turned to me and said, 'Well, he is an awful bore; and I am glad he's gone." Well, I began to feel that I was a bore, too; and I got out as quick as I could. [Laughter.] That is not real love; that is love with the tongue, while the heart is not true. Now, let us not love in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. That is the kind of love God gives us, and he wants the same in return.

Now there is another side to this truth. A man was talking to me, out here the other day, that he didn't believe there was any love at all; that Christians professed to have love, but he didn't believe men could have two coats; and I think he reflected on me, because I had on my overcoat at the time, and he hadn't got any. I looked at him and said: "Suppose I should give you one of my coats, you would drink it up before sundown. I love you too much to give you my coat and have you drink it up." A good many people are complaining now that Christians don't have the love they ought to have; but I tell you it is no sign of want of love that we don't love the lazy man. I have no sympathy with those men that are just begging twelve months of the year. It would be a good thing, I believe, to have them die off. They are of no good. I admit that there are some that are not real, and sincere, and true; but there are many that would give the last penny they had to help a man who really needed help.

But there are a good many sham cases-men that won't work, and the moment they get a penny they spend it in drink. To such men it is no charity to give. A man that won't work should be made to work. I believe there is a great deal more hope of a drunkard, or a murderer, or a gambler, than there is of a lazy man. I never heard of a lazy man being converted yet, though I remember talking once with a minister in the backwoods of Iowa about lazy men. He was all discouraged in his efforts to convert lazy men; and I said to him, "Did you ever know of a lazy man to be converted?" "Yes," said he, "I knew of one, but he was so lazy he did not stay converted but about six weeks." And that is as near as I ever heard of a lazy man being converted; and if there are any here to-day saying they don't love us because we don't give them any money, I say we love them too well. We don't give to them because it is ruin.

Some years ago I picked up several children in Chicago, and thought I would clothe and feed them; and I took special interest in those boys, to see what I could make of them. I don't think it was thirty days before the clothes had all gone to whisky, and the fathers had drank it all up. One day I met one of the little boys, for whom I had bought a pair of boots only the day before. There was a snowstorm coming up, and he was barefooted. "Mike," says I, "how's this? Where are your shoes?" "Father and mother took them away," said he. There is a good deal that we think is charity, that is really doing a great deal of mischief; and the people must not think, because we don't give them money to aid them in their poverty, that we don't love them; for the money would go into their pockets to get whisky with. It is no sign that we are all hypocrites, and insincere in our love, that we don't give money. I believe if the prodigal son could have got all the money he wanted in that foreign country, he would never have come home, and it was a good thing for him that he did get hard up, and had to live on the husks that the swine ate. And it is a good thing that people should suffer. If they get a good living without work, they will never work. We can never make anything of them. God has decreed that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and not live on other people.

But I am getting away from the subject. I only wanted to touch upon this subject because a good many are complaining that Christian people don't help them. I have sometimes fifteen or twenty letters a day, coming from Kansas and Europe even, asking us to take ap a collection. They say: "Here is a poor woman. Just get the people to give a penny apiece." Suppose we began doing that sort of thing. We should have to have somebody to look up this man or this woman, and find if they are worthy. If we took up one collection we would have to take up five hundred. I never found a person true to Christ but what the Lord would take care of them. I think it is a good thing for people to suffer a little until they come back to