emer's sacrifice and righteousness; you grieve over
your own backsliding, and come anew to the blood of sprinkling; the twin
emotions, confession and prayer, struggle together in your breast,
"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." Thus far, it is well. The
field has been broken; the seed has been covered in the ground; the
covered seed has sprung; the sprung seed has grown apace and now seems
near maturity. The evil spirit that seeks to spoil this fair promise
seldom comes in the form of speculative unbelief. When you begin to fall
away, you do not begin by abjuring your religion, or denying the Lord.
You do not pull the grown but unripe corn up by the roots and cast it
over the hedge: the harvest is marred in a more secret and silent way.
The kingdom of the wicked one, cunningly in this matter imitating the
kingdom of God, "cometh not with observation." Weeds spring up among the
wheat. At first they are small and scarcely perceptible; the
inexperienced, apprehending no danger, are put off their guard. The
first leaves which these bitter roots put forth are generally smooth,
tender, and apparently harmless, giving to the inexperienced eye no
indication of their rough and ravenous nature. But these thorns, if they
are not watched, curbed, and killed, may yet cause the loss of the soul.

If you are poor, anxieties about work and wages, clothes and food, wife
and children, become the thorn plants, harmless in appearance at first,
which in the end may choke the seed of grace in your heart. If you are
rich, the pleasure which wealth may purchase, or love of the wealth
itself, may become the bitter root, which in its maturity may overpower
all spiritual life within you, and leave only chaff, to be driven away
in the great day of the Lord. Watch and pray: these cares and pleasures
present themselves at first in humble and submissive guise; it is by
their gradual growth that they are enabled to inflict a deadly injury.
Their roots, if not checked, silently drain all the sap of your soul,
and the kingdom of God within you, although never formally abjured, is
permitted to sink into decay. Your time, your memory, your imagination,
your affections, your thoughts, late and early,--all that constitutes
your life, instead of being devoted first to the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, are usurped and absorbed by the things that perish in the
using. When you betake yourself to the word, to prayer, to communion,
your heart, alre