But, on the other hand, are the lines of that young convert cast only amid trials, and not actual sins? Has He who appoints the boundaries of our habitations, appointed ours where faith is put to the proof, and the need of Almighty grace more clearly demonstrated? Then, by that grace, that young Christian must stand; even there it may be with him as it was with the three children in the tyrant's furnace when it was heated seven times. The highest display of the power of truth, the brightest trophy to the triumph of grace, is to see some devoted believer holding fast the faith without wavering at the post of duty, alike against the scorn of the money-worshipper and the grossness of the unblushingly profane; and, blessed be God, his grace is sufficient even for that. THE WORLD AN OBJECT OF PITY. But farther: While the Christian, in his social intercourse, tries to shun the society of godless men, he is to make it plain that /he shuns, because he loves them/. We assume that that Christian /will/ shun them; for he is bound to that by a law both in nature and in grace. But his motive is not that of spiritual pride. It has nothing akin to the feeling which dictated the words, "Stand by, for I am holier than thou;" nay, he is to show that he withdraws, because he cannot countenance what is ruinous to man and opposed to the mind of God. While we try to make religion felt, it must be the religion of love, and not of haughtiness or of bigotry. We should remember that the world is a poor jaded world, and calls for pity rather than for wrath: its men have no resting-place either for the body or the soul; it has no antidote for its misery, no remedy for its disease. It is the shipwrecked seaman on his raft, trying to quench his burning thirst with the water of the ocean, only to make that thirst more burning still. It is the body weighed down with dropsy to the grave's edge, yet seeking relief in what only augments its misery. And all that should awaken pity for the world in our intercourse with it. Be it made plain, that we can be no parties to the world's ruin; we cannot trample on the Word of God to gratify the sinner's love of sin. Nay, if we be Christians indeed, if we have in us the spirit of Him who died for the ungodly, we must love the sinner too well to countenance him in his ways. Our shunning of him, wherever duty will permit, is to be our silent protest against what the holy God so emphatically describes as "drowning men in perdition." Love, wisdom, God, all demand that course. THE WORLD'S DEADENING POWER.