sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be
called Thy son."

Go back at once before it be too late. Find out your sins and mend
them--before they find you out, and break your hearts.



SERMON VIII. SELF-DESTRUCTION



1 KINGS, xxii. 23.

"The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy
prophets."

The chapter from which my text is taken, which is the first lesson
for this evening's service, is a very awful chapter, for it gives us
an insight into the meaning of that most awful and terrible word--
temptation. And yet it is a most comforting chapter, for it shews
us how God is long-suffering and merciful, even to the most hardened
sinner; how to the last He puts before him good and evil, to choose
between them, and warns him to the last of his path, and the ruin to
which it leads.

We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning as a thoroughly
wicked man,--mean and weak, cruel and ungodly, governed by his wife
Jezebel, a heathen woman, in marrying whom he had broken God's law,--
a woman so famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity and