The lives of some of God's people fill us with holy astonishment. Strange and marvelous are the ways which God used in their case to find his own. Blessed be his name, he never relinquishes the search until the chosen are sought out effectually. They are not a people sought today and cast away tomorrow.

Almightiness and wisdom combined will make no failures; they shall be called "Sought out!" That any should be sought out, is matchless grace, but that we should be sought out is grace beyond degree! We can find no reason for it but God's own sovereign love, and can only lift up our heart in wonder, and praise the Lord that this day we wear the name of "Sought out."

It is not the scenery of this fair earth which is defiling, as ultra-spiritual simpletons would have us believe; neither is there anything in a lawful calling which necessarily interferes with holiness. From man proceeds the vileness; it comes neither

from hill nor dale, nor streaming river, nor even from the din of machinery or the hum of crowds. Moral evil is the strange substance which poisons and pollutes, else earth might be the vestibule of Heaven, and the labors of time a preparation for the engagements of eternity.