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o which we have fallen. Two reasons for this haste suggest themselves. (1) First of all, the soul that desires to love will make all speed in order that God's Name may {189} be relieved of the dishonour that befalls it when one of His family, one called by His name, signed and sealed as His soldier, renounces Him and gives in his allegiance to the Devil. We can brook no delay in such a matter. How keenly sensitive is human honour in like affairs! Let us not think that the divine honour is a duller thing than that indefinable possession men guard as the most sacred of all their moral treasures. (2) Again, for our own sakes, no time is to be lost in returning to God. Sin is a poison. Every moment the poison remains in the system makes it more difficult to expel. It is absorbed and carried to every part of the body, working wherever it touches with deadly effect. If we should take a poisonous draught by mistake, how instant we should be that we might be rid of it. How much more insistent should we be that the poison whose effects are eternal should not be given time for its deadly work. It is at this point that Satan's temptation comes in. "What is the use?" he whispers, "you will sin again." So does he try to discourage us, and the soul who thinks only of self is apt to stop and listen. Not so with him whose penitence has its root in love; not so with him who feels keenly that his act has dishonoured a loving, tender Father and Friend. He will not brood over his {190} fall, for he knows that every hour of such weak repining is an hour of added sin. He will sweep the temptation aside, and cry with strong resolution, "I will arise and go to my Father!" For he knows that if he waits, the numbing influence of the poison will creep into heart and will, and that after a time he may have neither desire nor power to repent. We must not leave this subject, however, without finding a reply to Satan's suggestion,--"It is of no use; you will sin again." Many a soul has been entrapped by it. Many a one, through fear of future failure, has been held back from righting the present wrong. But to yield to such a fear is to commit a special offence against the Holy Ghost. No promise is more constant in Holy Scripture than that if we rise in the strength He will give us, go forward again, and set no special task for ourselves beyond just doing the best we can, He will keep and sustain us. "He shall give His angels
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