Thirdly Past inconsistences often wither up the power of service. It is a mournful truth that if a man has once forfeited his character for honor, integrity, purity, Christian prudence and wisdom, he may have repented of his great transgression, he may have gone to "the fountain that is opened for all sin and uncleanness," and there he may have washed his stain away; but still his power of service is crippled. He cannot freely and happily engage in Christian work; he skulks into secrecy and retirement; he feels paralyzed and helpless when he tries to speak for God, to warn a brother from sin, or to urge upon him the duty of repentance and a godly life. It is a lamentable truth, for it shows how sin leaves its deep traces on the life, it proves that though our follies may be forgiven us, and the worst consequences of our sins be averted, there are some results that can never be blotted out. Every congregation contains many whose right hands seem hopelessly withered by their own bitter remembrances; they go softly all their days and are among the most unhappy of mortal men.

Fourthly Easily besetting sins will paralyze the usefulness of any man who does not with earnestness, faith, and prayer, wage ceaseless war against them. Every one has his own peculiar besetment. That which is a fiery temptation to one man presents no allurements to another. There is little use in warning any one against the sin which does not beset him; or against the vice to which he has no secret inclination. But alas, we all feel a strong repugnance fairly to examine those evil tendencies of our nature which most easily beset us. It is easy to indulge a virtuous indignation against a sin which is loathsome in our sight, but it is a harder task to deal honestly with that which approaches us dressed in the garb of expediency, recommended by some specious advantages, consecrated by long usage, and defended by many plausible excuses. It is comparatively easy to watch against those crushing, damaging, sins which scathe the moral nature, and if indulged may carry us away as with a flood, but it is harder work to be ever on our guard against

the silent, secret, sins of the heart, which if not conquered and expelled, may not less surely eat out our inner life, and sap our spiritual strength. Let a man yield himself indolently to the sway of an evil habit, let him give way to idle talk, let him relinquish his mind to the power of vain thoughts; and whatever he may profess, or appear, he will soon find that his hand is withered, that his profession is null, that his power of serving God is gone.

There are some forms of easily besetting sin which have their evil nature covered over by the soul-destroying name of "little sins," but which often utterly exhaust the power of holy service. Indolence, for instance, is one of the many forms of self-indulgence which do not deform and blacken the character, nor altogether deprive it of the respect of fellow-man; yet it is ever ready to substitute self-gratification in the place of self-denial; it is always furnished with plausible excuses for refusing to do a generous or painstaking thing. The indolent man throws upon his state of health, his lack of strength, his age, his circumstances, his responsibilities, the entire blame of his uselessness, and it never seems to occur to him, that Christ commands him to conquer these obstacles, to renounce the devil and all his works, to "take up his cross daily and follow Him." "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have nothing." "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

Again, the fear of man is another of these silent withering influences which restrain usefulness and quench our zeal. The love of human approbation, support, success, has destroyed the moral life, has murdered the souls of many. There are men who would be restrained from the commission of a crime by the presence of a little child, but who are not withheld from it by the knowledge that the eye of God is as a flame of fire, searching out all secret sins, and that He will reward every man according to his deeds. So there are a great multitude who abstain from doing wise and generous deeds lest they should offend some powerful neighbour; who

make loud professions of love to Christ where such professions can bring reputation of sanctity, or even influence with the world, but who are ashamed of Him in the presence of the blustering unbeliever; who can even like Peter go with Jesus into the garden, and then at the twitting of an idle girl deny that they know Him; who from the fear of losing the smile of some wealthy patron jeopardize their immortal souls, slink away from holy service and relapse into worldly indifference, amid the sneer and the chuckle of the devil and all his angels. Ungoverned temper, is by some strange confusion of thought, classed among "little sins." There never was a greater mistake. Surely, a fit of drunkenness is less hateful than a sour angry temper, in His judgment, who has said, "Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause is a murderer in his heart." Many exclude themselves for years from Christian work, out of petty spite and foolish vanity. Verily, these have their right hand withered by an easily besetting sin. We must not omit all mention of some of those secret sins which are the unexpressed causes, the unacknowledged explanations, of the silence and inactivity of many on-lookers of the Church. A base habit, a smothered lust, a concealed fraud, or an un-Christian mode of transacting business, is often the true explanation of the obstinate aloofness and indolence of many professed members of Christ's Church. They hear the demand of the Master for clean hands and a pure heart; they possess neither, and so they dread to encounter the accusation of conscience which would

inevitably accompany all Christian effort. Verily, we who look on the great evil that covers the earth; who know the great God who is in heaven, and the great Saviour who has come to knit this poor wicked world into fellowship with heaven and Himself; we who know that He has power to exhaust its curse, to sweep away its evils, to explode the mine of destruction, to cast Death and Hell into the lake of fire, and to regenerate by His Spirit and redeem by His blood all who believe in Him;-surely we must burn to join in this great work. If, then, we are convinced

that bigotry and prejudice, inconsistences and sins, that the faults of the understanding, the heart and the life willamid all the other mischief that they may do-obstruct our usefulness, paralyze our energies, or mar our success, we shall be disposed briefly to consider :—

II. THE HEALING OF THE WITHERED HAND. Christ came into this world not merely to set man free from the bondage of sin, but to emancipate all his faculties for holy service, to strengthen all his powers, to summon him to work while it is day. Detecting at once the surmises and queries which were at work in the minds of those around Him, in that Galilean synagogue, He said to the man that had the withered hand, "Stand forth in the midst; " and then turned round on His accusers with the inquiry, "Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath day, or to do evil? to save life or to kill?" Thus He suggested the truth that not to do good is to do evil, not to save life if we have the power to do so, is to kill. The positive sin of omitting to do good, had never before crossed the minds of these Pharisees. And who is there that has duly felt the responsibility of the evil that he might have checked, the misery he might have removed, the tears he might have dried, the souls he might have saved? Yet if this were true; that is, if not to do God's work was equivalent to doing the devil's work, the question was at once altered; the Pharisees could have nothing to answer; "they held their peace" :-and Christ continued, "What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful TO DO WELL on the sabbath day."

They met this appeal of Jesus with sullen silence; "and He looked around upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts;" then without waiting longer for their sanction He cried in words that are preserved by three Evangelists, "Stretch forth thine hand;" and imme

diately that hand which had no power in itself, which no human skill could heal, felt at once that a divine energy was given to it. Divine strength was perfected in its weakness, and it was "made whole" even as the other.

There are three lessons of practical value which we may learn from this narrative.

First Christ's willingness to heal us. He is ever seeking us; His eye is always scanning our necessity; He knows our imperfections and shortcomings, as no other can do ; and He is able and willing to remove all that hampers and impedes the freedom of our spiritual life. He does not restrict His love and grace to the saving of notorious sinners— the snatching of firebrands from the burning; wherever He sees any of sin's work, wherever the heart and life of man are crushed and injured by the fall, there the pitying eye of Jesus rests. He singles out the humble publican, the blind beggar, the impotent man, the outcast leper, and the palsied cripple, and gives to each the strength and the healing that he needs. I believe that He is "ever present to heal," looking on every one of us who having ever been injured and paralyzed by sin, feel ourselves wholly unable to do the thing which our reason and conscience call on us to do. He summons all who feel that their spiritual hand is withered to stand forth and receive His blessing.

Secondly: The way in which we are to make use of Divine strength. Clearly nothing less than divine strength could help this man to stretch out "a withered hand." His power was null; he might as well be told to fly, as to do what seemed so impossible. Was not that the thing that he could not do, and had not done for years? The muscle was wasted, the nerve inactive, the will was powerless to do that thing. If the man had reasoned thus, his hand would have hung useless by his side until his dying day; but when he willed to stretch it forth, God willed in him; the communication of Divine strength, was granted to him at the very moment when he determined to obey the command of Christ. Having