cross, extend a helping hand to the fatherless and the widows in their tribulation, and withal keep himself unspotted from this world. These, then, are the three rounds in the Jacob's ladder whereby we clamber heavenward: a merciful hand, a prayerful soul, and a clean heart. In considering them let us invert their order so as to represent to ourselves a Christian guarding against defilement by prayer and acts of mercy — an order more convenient and logical and one sanctioned by Christ when in Gethrsemani He said to His Apostles: "Watch ye and pray, that in the hour of trial ye enter not into temptation."
"To keep oneself unspotted from this world." Brethren, the world reeks defilement, it is full of the occasions of sin. As surely as the body, our shoes and clothing and our skin contract or exude uncleanness amid the efforts of a busy day, so surely does the soul become more or less contaminated by contact with the world. Within, without, at home, abroad, everywhere, temptations are encountered. In the nineteenth chapter of the book of Numbers we read that when a death occurred, the tent and every person and thing therein, and every open vessel that had no covering bound upon it, were unclean. Being then in the desert, the Israelites lived in tents and stored their necessaries in earthen jars. Of the many things prescribed by law as rendering men unclean, unfit to mingle with their fellows and worship before God's tabernacle, none left so dark a stain as sin's consummation, death. One day sufficed
