o has 'tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to
come,' and has known Jesus Christ as Saviour and Friend, should decline
from Him, and turn to anything besides. And yet, strange and sad, and
like some enchantment as it is, it is the experience at times and in a
measure, of us all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical
degree, of many who have walked for a little while behind the Master,
and then have turned away and walked no more with Him. We may well
wonder; but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of a
sorcerer's eye without us, but it is in the weakness of our own wills
and the waywardness of our own hearts, and the wandering of our own
affections. We often court the coming of the evil influence, and are
willing to be fascinated and to turn our backs upon Jesus. Mysterious it
is, for why should men cast away diamonds for paste? Mysterious it is,
for we do not usually drop the substance to get the shadow. Mysterious
it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order
to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not
usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he
can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and
odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are
sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without
number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away
to the fascinations of the world. Custom, the familiarity that we have
with Him, the attrition of daily cares--like the minute grains of sand
that are cemented on to paper, and make a piece of sandpaper that is
strong enough to file an inscription off iron--the seductions of worldly
delights, the pressure of our daily cares--all these are as a ring of
sorcerers that stand round about us, before whom we are as powerless as
a bird in the presence of a serpent, and they bewitch us and draw us
away.

The sad fact has been verified over and over again on a large scale in
the history of the Church. After every outburst of renewed life and
elevated spirituality there is sure to come a period of reaction when
torpor and formality again assert themselves. What followed the
Reformation in Germany? A century of death. What followed Puritanism in
England? An outburst of lust and godlessness.

So it has always been, and so it is with us individually, as we too
well know. Ah, brethren!