It is this feeling of the mysterious vitality of sin, and the subtle kinship of one form of sin with other forms, and its destructiveness when it seizes on a life or poisons an atmosphere, that helps us more than anything else to feel the force and the intensity of the Saviour's prayer for us: "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil." It is this same feeling of the spreading, insidious, infectious and destructive nature of sin that makes us echo this as our first and most earnest prayer for all we love, that God may keep them from evil; and it is this that makes us value so highly and recognise with thankful hearts every example of a pure and strong life, which gives inspiration and strength to those around it. XVI. SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. "As it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear."--ROMANS xi. 8. "Blindness in part is happened to Israel."--ROMANS xi. 25. It is a sad and painful reflection, and one which is continually forced upon us as we read the New Testament, that the long training and preparation of the Jews brought them at the last not to the acceptance but to the rejection of Jesus. They had been taught, generation after generation, that they were the called and chosen people of God. Psalmists and prophets had enriched their life with the outpouring of their moral and spiritual revelations, and fired their hopes with promises. They lived in the expectation of the Messiah who was to complete these revelations of the God who had led them and taught them ever since the days of their Egyptian bondage. Yet, when this crowning revelation came to them, they could not even recognise it. The Son of God "came unto His own and His own received Him not." As St. Paul expresses it in my text, while grieving for them with all the intensity of his fervid affection, their life was overgrown with a sort of spiritual dulness. They were suffering from a sort of ossification of the spirit, so that the last and greatest revelation of God could make no impression upon them.