our souls are ebbing and flowing in the agony of our temptation. It is at that time we feel the innermost parts of our being, the fountains of the great deep broken up; and then the spirit says, I will be righteous. And though we are not conscious of it, though the animal has been accustomed to obey the man, there is this secret opposition between the two. It is in the nature of what oculists tell us. They tell us, that the image of an object is inverted on the retina of the eye, and that it is only by constant habit of correction of the impression that we see things truly. So there is the natural inversion of the nature of the man; the animal gets the upper hand in the man, and it is only by the unconscious training of the man in Christian society that the supremacy of the moral part of the man is strongly established; and we are not conscious of the act of faith, but still that act of faith underlies all morality, and it is true in morality as in religion, “The just shall live by faith.” There is no righteous deed that any one of us has done that we did not do by virtue of this act of faith; “The just shall live by faith.” Now let us pass on to another question, for if the whole moral and religious life is based upon the act of faith, there doubtless must be a good reason for it. We Christians believe that God made us so for a good reason. Can we see any reason why we should live our moral life by faith? That faith is not a mere assent to propositions, it is trust in a person, in a nature, a belief that we are better, nobler, than our understanding would persuade us we are. Every time this opposition which I have described arises within a man, he is given a choice; he has to pass through a probation, or a test as to whether he will or will not believe in his better self, whether he will rise up to the idea of his spiritual nature, or sink down to the depths of his animal nature. There is a trial for him, and a discipline in the trial, and a culture and a growth of his moral nature if he stands firm in the trial. We cannot believe, in such a moment of trial, in our nobler and better selves, without becoming in the very act of believing, nobler and better out of such strife; and the man comes out stronger every time he wrestles with his baser self; his purer and nobler self comes out of the trial nobler and purer.