an angel of light, concealing his hideousness under a
borrowed cloak. He says to a young man: "Sow your wild oats. Time
enough to be religious when you grow old." The young man yields
himself to a life of extravagance and excess, under the false hope
that he will obtain solid satisfaction; and it is well if he awakens
to the deception before his appetites become tyrants, dragging him
down into depths of want and woe. Satan promises great things to his
victims in the indulgence of their lusts, but they never realize the
promises. The promised pleasure turns out to be pain, the promised
heaven a hell.

Beware lest Satan deceive you as he deceived Eve in the beginning.
"There is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Our Heart.

But we have been deceived by our own heart most of all. Who has not
proved the truth of the Scripture: "The heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" How many times we
have said that we never would do a certain thing again, and then
have done it within twenty-four hours! A man may think he has
fathomed its depths, but he finds there are further depths he has
not reached. What gross self-deception is due to it! "He that
trusteth in his own heart is a fool," said Solomon. Luther once said
he feared his own heart more than the Pope and all the cardinals.

Many a weeping wife has come to me about her husband, saying: "He is
good at heart." The truth is--that is the worst spot in him. If the
heart was good, all else would be right. Out of the heart are the
issues of life. Christ said: "From within, out of the heart of men,
proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts,
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
blasphemy, pride, foolishness." That is Christ's own statement
regarding the unregenerate heart.

Some years ago a remarkable picture was exhibited in London. As you
looked at it from a distance, you seemed to see a monk engaged in
prayer, his hands clasped, his head bowed. As you came nearer,
however, and examined the painting more closely, you saw that in
reality he was squeezing a lemon into a punchbowl!

What a picture that is of the human heart! Superficially examined,
it is thought to be the seat of all that is good and noble and
pleasing in a man; whereas in reality, until regenerated by the Holy
Ghost, it is the seat of all corruption. "T