m that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."
Deeper sense of sin, clearer views of the Gospel, warmer love to
Christ,--these are the safeguards against backsliding. Strive and pray
for these. Do not keep Christ on the surface; let him possess the
centre, and thence direct all the circumference of your life. "Whosoever
will save his life," by keeping its central mass all and whole for
himself, "shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake,"
opening and abandoning it to Christ from its circumference to its core,
"shall find it." It is then only his own, when he has without reserve
absolutely given it away.

It seems to have been after the manner of the seed on stony ground that
king Saul's faith grew and withered. It came away quickly at first, and
presented a goodly appearance for a while; but the ground, broken and
softened on the surface by Samuel's ministry and the call to the
kingdom, was rocky underneath, and the rock was never rent. When he was
seated on the throne, with the thousands of Israel coming and going at
his word, he began to feel the restraints of piety irksome, and to count
the rebukes of the aged prophet rude. The sun of prosperity scorched the
green growth of religious profession that had suddenly overspread his
outward life. Michal, his daughter, better acquainted, probably, with
the kingly airs of his later than with the pious confession of his
earlier days, seems to have partaken of his inward hardness while she
had no share of his superficial piety. Like him, she was ungodly in the
depths of her soul; but unlike him, she disdained to wear the outward
garb of godliness. When she exerted all the force of her irony in order
to make her husband David ashamed of his own zeal in dancing before the
Lord, she truly reflected the inner spirit though not the external
profession of her father's court. That taunt from the supercilious,
curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to
become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David's
defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface,
while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would
have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots
rest on a rock, dies out under the scorching sun of Galilee. But David's
faith was deep, and it ripened rather than withered under the scornful
glance of the worldly-minded princess, as corn, growing in goo