The waves are still tumbling upon the shore; with scarce perceptible progress they have advanced really a broad piece since I took my station here. Ever gathering their forces in long parallels, ever bending and falling, and seething back in wide sheets of white foam, seemingly ever repulsed, but really ever advancing, they bring to my mind an idea of great beauty and truth that I have somewhere met with, though where I cannot recall. It was a comparison of the earnest humble Christian’s progress in holiness to this coming in of the tide. The healthy Christian life will always be advancing; there must ever be a progression in holiness. Stagnant water is deteriorating water; it does not remain the same as when it ceased to flow. And this oft-repeated truth will come sadliest home to the more earnest, who are therefore the more humble. There ought to be, there _must_ be an advance, if the water be a living sea, and not a stagnant pool. But dare we hope that there _is_ any such progress, such steady continuous advance in our own Christian life? Alas! we look sadly back at it and see long lines of earnest endeavours, at least of passionate yearnings, after better things, after perfection, after the beauty of holiness, after Christ-like consistency: they came in, and come in still, bright perhaps, and intent, and resolved; and, lo! how they trip and fall as they reach the shore of trial, and slide back, losing all the ground again! Ever advancing, only to recede; ever rising, but to fall; ever trying, yet still baffled; only able to weep over their own weakness, and to sigh continually with a depression that men call a morbid pain. New yearnings at every special time of solemn self-examination; new resolves, driven on by the breath of prayers; new endeavours; and, after all, old failures! How the waves come in, earnest, but impotent, each running up the little way on the shore that its predecessor had attained, and giving ground again, to be succeeded by another as weak. * * * * *