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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
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