; and they mourn at the last, and say, "How have
we hated instruction, and despised the counsel of the Holy One." And now
they see that the strongest need a stronger one than themselves to
shield them, and that the wisest need a wiser one than themselves to
guide them, if they are to be kept from harm.

We have no disposition to be severe with such persons, for we belonged
to the same unhappy class ourselves. It never once entered our minds in
our earlier days, that we could ever fall away from Christ. We saw that
others were in danger, but we never supposed we were in danger
ourselves. We preached from the text, "Let him that thinketh he
standeth, take heed lest he fall," and we pressed the solemn warning on
our hearers with the greatest earnestness; but we never applied it to
ourselves. We supposed ourselves secure. And if any one had told us that
we should one day cease to be a Christian, and above all, if any man had
said that we should fall into unbelief, and be ranked with the opponents
of Christianity, we should have thought him insolent or mad. Yet we know
what followed. We cannot therefore deal harshly with our too
self-confident brethren. But we must give them faithful warning. Be on
your guard, my dear young friends. You are not so free from defects, nor
so far from danger, as your conscious innocence, or the great deceiver,
may insinuate. There may be tendencies to evil within you, and
temptations in the mysterious world around you, of the character and
force of which you have no conception. It was as great and good a man as
you perhaps that said,

"Weaker than a bruised reed,
Help I every moment need."

And he was wise that said,--

"Beware of Peter's words,
Nor confidently say,
'I never _will_ deny thee, Lord;'
But, 'Grant I never may.'"

There are devices of the wicked one of which you are not yet aware;
"depths of Satan" which you have not yet fathomed; and terrible
possibilities of which, as yet, you have never dreamed. I say again, Be
on your guard. "Be not high-minded, but fear." "Blessed is the man that
feareth always." None are so weak as those who think themselves strong.
None are in such danger as those who think themselves secure.

Man, even at best, is not so great, so wise, so strong, as some are
prone to suppose: and when, cut off from Christ and His people, from the
Bible and prayer, he trusts in his own resources, he is poor, and weak,
and frail in