some. The world itself does not so act in judging of its own. The
world reckons upon the possibility of being mistaken in many cases,
and yet does not cease to believe that there is honesty and truth to
be found. One of themselves, a poet of their own, has said with no
less justice than beauty--

"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
And though foul things put on the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."

But, above all, we have the authority of the word of God, declaring
that such backslidings are the very tests of the true church: "For
there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved
may be made manifest among you," I Cor. 11:19. It is not, however,
meant that any who had really believed went back to perdition. On the
contrary, it is the creed of every sound evangelical church, that
those who do go back to perdition were persons who never really
believed in Jesus. Their eyes may have been opened to see the dread
realities of sin and of the wrath to come; but if they saw not
righteousness for their guilty souls in the Saviour, there is nothing
in all Scripture to make us expect that they will continue awake.
"Awake, them that sleepest, and _Christ will give thee light_," is the
call--inviting sinners to a point far beyond mere conviction. One who,
for a whole year, went back to folly, said: "'Your sermon on the
corruption of the heart made me despair, and so I gave myself up to my
old ways--attending dances, learning songs," etc. A knowledge of our
guilt, and a sense of danger, will not of themselves keep us from
falling; nay, these, if alone, may (as in the above case) thrust us
down the slippery places. We are truly secure only when our eye is on
Jesus, and our hand locked in his hand. So that the history of
backslidings, instead of leading us to doubt the reality of grace in
believers, will only be found to teach us two great lessons, viz. the
vast importance of pressing immediate salvation on awakened souls, and
the reasonableness of standing in doubt of all, however deep their
convictions, who have not truly fled to the hope set before them.

There was another ground of prejudice against the whole work, arising
from the circumstance that the Lord had employed in it young men not
long engaged in the work of the ministry, rather than the fathers in
Israel. But herein it was that sovereign grace shone forth the more
conspicuously. Do such objectors sup