will be curbed by the thought that all singularity carries with it a corresponding responsibility. It tunes the life to a high pitch; and failure is all the more pitiful. It demands stern adherence to principle. It fixes a more inflexible standard. Dr. Johnson, writing of Dean Swift in the Lives of the Poets, says: "Singularity, as it implies a contempt of general practice, is a kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule; he, therefore, who indulges peculiar habits is worse than others, if he be not better." This is a true principle of judgment in all matters of dissent from established opinion and custom. It is a principle which our Lord applied to His followers. He made demands on them larger and higher than the world asked. "What do ye more than others?" He asked. If you are diverse from others, if you are set apart from them, and yet obey not a grander law, what do ye more than others? The only excuse for laws diverse from all people is that they should be higher laws, and be obeyed with whole-hearted loyalty. And the very moral necessity laid upon a man's conscience to be singular, the unflinching advocacy of an unpopular cause for conscience' sake, gives to the character strength and solidity. Such a man, called to live a life of protest, serves his generation better than the

whole unthinking crowd who are swept along by the mere momentum of numbers. He may make mistakes, and lay the emphasis wrongly on accidental details sometimes; but better that than dull uniformity, where every coat is cut to the same pattern, every opinion and idea is rounded off, and smoothed down, and hall-marked. The conventional has always its swarm of adherents; the original has to fight for even a foothold.

In the last issue a man is not absolved from complicity in evil because he has followed a multitude. He is called to be loyal to the truth as he knows it, as conscience directs, however diverse it seems to make his way from the common path. However many are the temptations on the one hand to crankiness, and eccentricity, and conceit, far more deadly are the temptations on the other side, to weakness, and cowardice, and pliable principles, and the stifling of conscience. Young men are sometimes charged with forwardness, and too great desire to be singular, and to take up a position different from the conventional. That may be so with a few; but with most the very opposite is the charge that could be substantiated, of moral cowardice, of weakness in following their own instincts. They are too easily cowed into giving up their principles, too easily

moved by a sneer, too easily brow-beaten by a majority. If in the presence of temptation they stood to their guns, there would be more moral victories, and a finer type of manhood developed amongst us. If we were less afraid of singularity for conscience' sake, if we lived to God and not to our fellowmen, there would be less marking time and more marching in the battlefield of life.

Be true to your best self; be true to principle; be true to God. Let the world stand where it will, stand you on the side of whatsoever things are pure, honourable, just, lovely, of good report. Be not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation. Work not with eye-service as menpleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. When sinners entice, consent ye not. Give Christ His place in the midst, the throne of the heart, the judgment-seat of the Church; and the charge spoken in blame will be an eternal glory, "a certain people whose laws are diverse from all people."

VIII

THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS

The way of transgressors is hard.-PROVERBS xiii. 15.

THE actual words of this proverb are difficult, and it looks as if the text were corrupt. The Revised Version translates it "the way of the treacherous is rugged." With the best emendations of the text it may be impossible to make sure of how this particular proverb actually ran. But fortunately there is nothing at stake in the way of doctrine. The words I have taken as text are no isolated words, and the thought they contain does not depend on the translation of a single proverb. I could easily have found other sayings from this very chapter, without looking any further, sayings which simply repeat in other forms the thought of this verse. "A righteous man hateth lying, but a wicked man cometh to shame." Righteousness guardeth him that is upright in the way, but wickedness overthroweth the sinner." "The light of the righteous rejoiceth, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out." "The law of the

wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death." "Evil pursueth sinners, but the righteous shall be recompensed with good." These are all taken from this same chapter; and our special text thus not only agrees with one stream of teaching in the Bible but is in keeping with the special somewhat prudential morality of this chapter from which it is taken.

I choose the words though they are differently translated in the Revised Version, and though they are even pronounced untranslatable altogether by some critics, because the words themselves are so common and express so simply and clearly an accepted fact of moral life. They have been used as the headline of copybooks for generations, and have been quoted till they are embedded in the common morality of the man in the street. When a man breaks the law, gives way to sudden temptation, embezzles a trust, or the like, and then in consequence is beset with difficulty and face to face with exposure and shame, and at last is confronted by the avenger and the expected disgrace and punishment are meted out, the words that come to us to sum up the moral of the situation are that the way of transgressors is hard.

It is more on the surface than other more pro