September 14

16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.

18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. 19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him: 20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

Confess your faults one to another (verse 16).

"As long as you make your faults a bulwark to stand behind and fight me, so long I am your enemy and you are my foe. . . . It is not the offence, but the defence of the offence that makes it hard for us to bear with one another. A man may say to me, 'You are a vile sinner;' he may rain his words on me like blows, but if he comes back when his passion has gone down with tears in his eyes, and says, 'Oh, forgive me; I did not mean it,' it is all gone, quicker than a flash of lightning. I love him all the more. The fault is not hard to bear. It is the defending the fault—it is the refusing to make up under fault—that rankles and makes us ugly in return. Where meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

32 Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that

forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

34 ¶ Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?

35 It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

This lesson concerns the Gospel Feast, from which we take a few practical teachings:

1. The gospel is a feast, abundant, and perfectly satisfying to the soul. "The righteous eateth to the satisfying of the soul."

2. The invitation is universal. All are invited—but the poor in spirit, those who find themselves crippled in their endeavors to walk uprightly, and those whose moral vision is not so good as their neighbors—are urged to come.

3. There are no good reasons for not immediately accepting the gospel invitation. All the excuses of men are born of an evil heart, and are not really hindrances at all.

4. All rejections of the invitation are a choice of the pleasures of this world as against the enjoyments of the next. It is an attempt to gain them at the peril of the soul.

5. The invitation is only for the present time. The time will come when the Master of the house will say: "None of those men which were bidden shall taste of My supper."

Closet Promise.—My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, saith the Lord.—Jer. xxxi. 14.

Have you a want? Keep it not; carry it to Him: it shall lie on the mercy-seat to be considered. In due time shall be written on it, "To be provided for."—Lady Powerscourt.