are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it
is not of our own seeking, but of _God's sending_. If we walk without
care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not God in our ways, and
take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion,--leaving the Bible unread, and
the closet unvisited,--if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their
ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own
eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble.
A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling
Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a
mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal,
cluster around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to
lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the
ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her
invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We
are _tempting God_, and shall _we_ be delivered?

And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not
applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's
claims to the heart and the life?

With an evil nature, and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure
of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your
friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might
still beset you; but you would confront and traverse them, as the
Hebrews of old did the weedy bed of the Red Sea, its watery walls
guarding their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, and the
pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark
and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a
presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the
waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a
slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring
abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your
breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered
eyes,--what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose
grasp your fingers tremble, be malignant, and treacherous, and suicidal,
determined on destroying your life at the sacrifice of his own? He
assures you that he will bring you safely through upon the other side of
the fall. And SUCH is SATAN. Lost himself, and desperate, he is set on
swelling the numbe