TV. APPLICATION OF THE suBJECT. 1. In relation to the irreligious. Men may have fame and fortune; they may have intellectual endowments and worldly wealth ; they may have every earthly comfort and convenience; they may have kind friends, happy homes, and pleasant family relations; they may have all that heart can wish, But, if they want religion, then they lack the one thing that can make men truly pros- perous—blessed in time and happy through eternity. 2. With respect to the amtable, and persons possessing certain good qualities. Persons may be amiable; they may be frank and affable and obliging; they may be generous and liberal, hospitable and kind- hearted ; they may be upright in their dealings, and honourable in all the business of life; they may have strong natural affection in their various relationships, as sons or husbands or parents;—they may be all this, and have all these good natural quali ties, without either possessing or professing religion. We may admire and even love them for their amiability and other natural excellences, for men differ widely by nature as well as by grace; but, wanting religion, one thing they lack, and that one thing is the one thing needful. 3. In reyard to professors of religion. Men may pro- fess themselves to be on the Lord’s side; they may be hearers and readers and students of God’s Word; they may by study make themselves acquainted with its precious truths—its doctrines and duties, its precepts and promises, its entreaties and exhortations, its warnings and reproofs; they may have respect for the Scriptures, for the sabbath, for the sanctuary, and its services; they may unite with God’s people in prayer, in praise, in the sacraments, and in other exercises of religion ;—and after all this, and notwithstanding all this, their heart may not be right toward God; one thing they lack, and, continuing to lack it, they must perish in the end. Oh, how dreadful to think of such having their lot at last with the openly irreligious, the profligate, and the profane! And how such will gloat over those professors of religion when they descend to the abode of the lost, and exultingly say, “‘ Are youalso become as we? Are you become like unto us?” You, who professed religion, who offered prayers, and sang praises, and piqued yourselves on your superiority to profligates like us; you, who did g0 much and went so far,—are you become our comrades in misery, our companions in distress? Oh, we may imagine the fiendish glee with which false or fallen professors shall be jeered, when they sink down into partnership with the utterly abandoned in the place of destruction and the region of despair! 4. With reference to ourselves, and to avoid self-deception. The young ruler was practising self-deception, without know- ing it. He did not know his deficiency till the Saviour brought him to the severe practical proof before us. Here is a salutary lesson and a solemn warning to beware of deception in our estimate of ourselves. We too, even we, may be resting on & morality that is hollow and defective; we may fancy ourselves religious, while our heart is not right toward God, and has no real love to man. We may mistake enthusiasm, or the excite- ment of the occasion, or the power of sympathy, especially in times of revival, for love to Christ and his cause. We may enrol our names among the followers of the Lamb, aud profess our readiness to follow him whithersoever he leadeth, through evil report and good report; we may worship with a degree of devoutness in the sanctuary, partake of the sacraments, wear the so-called “livery of religion,” and practise strict outward morality. All this is right and proper, all this we should do; and yet, notwithstand- ing all this, we may not possess supreme love of the Saviour; and so this one thing we lack, and thus are destitute of the chief thing, the main thing, the one thing moat essentially needful, and absolutely indispensable to our present and éverlasting well- being. 5. How we are undeceived. We may be ignorant of our deficiency till the Saviour calls us to self-renunciation in some form or other; till he summons us to surrender some besetting sin or mortify some beloved lust—to cut off a right hand or a right foot
ca. x. 1—52.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 107