ess boy by himself when she saw Beelzebub's orchard before
him, and tell him what Solomon told his son, and to point out to him the
prophecy that King Lemuel's mother prophesied to her son. Poor Matthew
was a young man before his mother was aware of it. And, poor woman, she
only found that out when Mr. Skill was in the sick-room and was looking
at her with eyes that seemed to say to her that she had murdered her
child. She had loved too long to look on her first-born as still a
child. When he went at any time for a season out of her sight, she had
never followed him with her knowledge of the world; she had never
prevented him with an awakened and an anxious imagination; till now she
had got him home with no rest in his bones because of his sin. And then
she began to cry too late, O naughty boy, and, O careless mother, what
shall I do for my son!

2. "That food, to wit, that fruit," said Mr. Skill, "is even the most
hurtful of all. It is the fruit of Beelzebub's orchard." So it is.
There is no fruit that hurts at all like that fruit. How it hurts at the
time, we see in Matthew's sick-room; and how it hurts all a man's after
days we see in Jacob, and in Job, and in David, and in a thousand sin-
sick souls of whose psalms of remorse and repentance the world cannot
contain all the books that should be written. "And yet I marvel," said
the indignant physician, "that none did warn him of it; many have died
thereof." Oh if I could but get the ears of all the sons of godly
fathers and mothers who are beginning to tamper with Beelzebub's orchard-
trees, I feel as if I could warn them to-night, and out of this text, of
what they are doing! I have known so many who have died thereof. Oh if
I could but save them in time from those gripes of conscience that will
pull them to pieces on the softest and the most fragrant bed that shall
ever be made for them on earth! It will be well with them if they do not
lie down torn to pieces on their bed in hell, and curse the day they
first plashed down into their youthful hands the vine of Sodom. Both the
way to hell and the way to heaven are full of many kinds of hurtful
fruits; but that species of fruit that poor misguided Matthew plucked and
ate after he had well passed the gate that is at the head of the way is,
by all men's testimony, by far the most hurtful of all forbidden fruits.

3. The whole scene in Matthew's sick-room reads, after all, less like a
skilful invention t