spring the man's life was gone, and there was a mauled carcass
by the roadside. But, says my text, "No lion shall be there." I wish I
could make you feel, this morning, your entire security. I tell you
plainly that one minute after a man has become a child of God, he is
as safe as though he had been ten thousand years in heaven. He may
slip, he may slide, he may stumble; but he can not be destroyed. Kept
by the power of God, through faith, unto complete salvation.
Everlastingly safe.

The severest trial to which you can subject a Christian man is to kill
him, and that is glory. In other words, the worst thing that can
happen a child of God is heaven. The body is only the old slippers
that he throws aside just before putting on the sandals of light. His
soul, you can not hurt it. No fires can consume it. No floods can
drown it. No devils can capture it.

"Firm and unmoved are they
Who rest their souls on God;
Fixed as the ground where David stood,
Or where the ark abode."

His soul is safe. His reputation is safe. Everything is safe. "But,"
you say, "suppose his store burns up?" Why, then, it will be only a
change of investments from earthly to heavenly securities. "But," you
say, "suppose his name goes down under the hoof of scorn and
contempt?" The name will be so much brighter in glory. "Suppose his
physical health fails?" God will pour into him the floods of
everlasting health, and it will not make any difference. Earthly
subtraction is heavenly addition. The tears of earth are the crystals
of heaven. As they take rags and tatters and put them through the
paper-mill, and they come out beautiful white sheets of paper, so,
often, the rags of earthly destitution, under the cylinders of death,
come out a white scroll upon which shall be written eternal
emancipation.

There was one passage of Scripture, the force of which I never
understood until one day at Chamounix, with Mont Blanc on one side,
and Montanvent on the other, I opened my Bible and read: "As the
mountains are around about Jerusalem, so the Lord is around about them
that fear Him." The surroundings were an omnipotent commentary.

"Though troubles assail, and dangers affright;
Though friends should all fail, and foes all unite;
Yet one thing secures us, whatever betide,
The Scriptures assure us the Lord will provide."

V. Still further: the road spoken of is a pleasant road. God gives a
bond of indemnity against a