with honest
pride in our communion roll. But a year or two passes over, and the
critical season arrives when our young communicant 'comes out,' as the
word is. Up till now she has been a child, a little maid, a Bible-class
student, a young communicant, a Sabbath-school teacher. But she is now a
young lady, and she comes out into the world. We soon see that she has
so come out, as we begin to miss her from places and from employments her
presence used to brighten; and, very unwillingly, we overhear men and
women with her name on their lips in a way that makes us fear for her
soul, till many, oh, in a single ministry, how many, who promised well at
the gate and ran safely past many snares, at last sell all--body and soul
and Saviour--in Vanity Fair.

Well, Evangelist remains Evangelist still. Only, without losing any of
his sweetness and freeness and fulness of promise, he adds to that some
solemn warnings and counsels suitable now, as never before, to these two
pilgrims. If one may say so, he would add now such moral treatises as
Butler's _Sermons_ and _Serious Call_ to such evangelical books as _Grace
Abounding_ and _A Jerusalem Sinner Saved_.

To-morrow the two pilgrims will come out of the wilderness and will be
plunged into a city where they will be offered all kinds of
merchandise,--houses, lands, places, honours, preferments, titles,
pleasures, delights, wives, children, bodies, souls, and what not. An
altogether new world from anything they have yet come through, and a
world where many who once began well have gone no further. Such counsels
as these, then, Evangelist gave Christian and Faithful as they left the
lonely wilderness behind them and came out towards the gate of the
seductive city--'Let the Kingdom of Heaven be always before your eyes,
and believe steadfastly concerning things that are invisible.' Visible,
tangible, sweet, and desirable things will immediately be offered to
them, and unless they have a faith in their hearts that is the substance
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, it will soon be
all over with them and their pilgrimage. 'Let no man take your crown,'
he said also, as he foresaw at how many booths and counters, houses,
lands, places, preferments, wives, husbands, and what not, would be
offered them and pressed upon them in exchange for their heavenly crown.
'Above all, look well to your own hearts,' he said. Canon Venables
laments over the teaching that B