of extirpating their enemies, made a
hollow truce with them. What was the result? Years upon years of tedious
warfare. "They were scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes!"
It is quaintly but truthfully said by an old writer, "The candle will
never burn clear, while there is a _thief_ in it. Sin indulged, in the
conscience, is like Jonah in the ship, which causeth such a tempest,
that the conscience is like a troubled sea, whose waters cannot
rest."--(_Thomas Brooks_.)

"Keep," then, "thy heart with all diligence," or, (as it is in the
forcible original Hebrew,) "keep thy heart _above all keeping_," "for
out of it are the issues of life." (Prov. iv. 23.) Let this ever be your
preservative against temptation, "How would _Jesus_ have acted here?
would _He_ not have recoiled, like the sensitive plant, from the
remotest contact with sin? Can _I_ think of dishonoring Him by tampering
with His enemy; incurring from His own lips the bitter reflection of
injured love, 'I am wounded in the house of my friends'?"

He tells us the secret of our preservation and safety, "Simon! Simon!
Satan hath desired to have thee, that he might sift thee as wheat; _but
I_ have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not!"

"ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."

Twenty-fifth Day.

RECEIVING SINNERS.

"This man receiveth sinners."--Luke, xv. 2.

The ironical taunt of proud and censorious Pharisees formed the glory of
Him who came, "not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
Publicans and outcasts; those covered with a deeper than any bodily
leprosy--laid bare their wounds to the "Great Physician;" and as
conscious guilt and timid penitence crept abashed and imploring to His
feet, they found nothing but a forgiving and a gracious welcome!

"His ways" were not as "man's ways!" The "watchmen," in the Canticles,
"smote" the disconsolate one seeking her lost Lord; they tore off her
veil, mocking with chilling unkindness her anguished tears. Not so "the
Chief Shepherd and Bishop of souls." "_This_ man _receiveth_ sinners"!
See Nicodemus, stealing under the shadows of night to elude
observation--type of the thousand thousand who in every age have gone
trembling in their night of sin and sorrow to this Heavenly Friend! Does
Jesus punish his timidity by shutting His door against him, spurning him
from His presence? "He will not break the bruised reed, He will not
quench the smoking flax!"

And He is sti