universally employed and understood in one direction only. It is a
pity and a mistake; because we fail to appreciate many of the warning
signals which the Spirit of God stations along our path. Any
inordinate desire for sensual and pleasurable excitement, whether fixed
on a right object, or directed towards a wrong one, comes under the
denomination of "lust." Strong and ill-regulated desire or passion, in
whatever direction it expresses itself, will work our ruin, and not
that alone of impurity, to which this old word is now specially
confined.

In dealing with temptation and sin, we must always take into account
the presence in the human heart of that sad relic of the Fall, which
biases men towards evil. Every one that has handled bowls on the green
is familiar with the effect of the bias. The bowls are not perfect
spheres, and are weighted on one side in such a way that, as they leave
the hand, they will inevitably turn off from a straight course; and on
this account the greater skill is required from the hands that
manipulate and impel them. Such a bias has come to us all: first, from
our ancestor Adam; and, secondly, by that law of heredity which has
been accumulating its malign and sinister force through all the ages.
God alone can compute the respective strength of these forces; but He
can, and He will, as each separate soul stands before his judgment bar.

Herod was the son of the great Herod, a voluptuous, murderous tyrant;
and, from some source or other, he had inherited a very weak nature.
Perhaps, if he had come under strong, wholesome influences, he would
have lived a passably good life; but it was his misfortune to fall
under the influence of a beautiful fiend, who became his Lady Macbeth,
his Jezebel, and wrought the ruin of his soul. It is a remarkable
thing, how strong an influence a beautiful and unscrupulous woman may
have over a weak man. And for this reason, amongst others, weakness
becomes wickedness. The man who allows himself to drift weakly before
the strongest influence is almost certain to discover that, in this
world, the strongest influences are those which make for sin; these
touch him most closely, and operate most continuously, and find in his
nature the best _nidus_, or nest, in which to breed.

The influences that suggest and make for sin in this world are so
persistent--at every street corner, in every daily newspaper, among
every gathering of well-dressed people, or ill--t