--ITS EXPLANATION. We explain it just by stating the truth. The child who has gone astray never was in the right way: he refused so much as to enter it. His training was a burden and an offence. Fear might compel him to comply with a form for a season. The parent took pains; he corrected the child, perhaps through tears; he warned; he prayed; but the heart was never won to God. The iniquity which was bound up in the heart of that child resisted every appliance. Sin was still loved. It was turned like a sweet morsel under the tongue. Holiness continued to be disliked. The constraints of a Christian home were like fetters to that child; and, when his pent-up iniquity broke out at last, it was only the open display of what had always been latently ruling. In a word, he had not been trained, nay, he had resisted every attempt to train him, in the way in which he ought to go. He might be the inmate of a Christian home; but he never had a Christian heart; the truth of God was repelled; the Spirit of God was quenched; and the explanation is:--"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." On the other hand, however, does some child receive the truth into the heart? Does sin become an offence? Is the Word of God loved? Is the salvation of God sought? Then that child /is/ trained in the way in which he ought to go. There may yet come an eclipse of faith. Temptation may for a season prevail, and the world may appear to have regained the mastery. But if the nurture and admonition of the Lord has been welcomed into the heart, as the Spirit imparts his blessing, the effect produced will never fade utterly away. Out of the mouth of such a one God will perfect praise; and while some companion beside him is growing up in wickedness, or casting the Word of God behind his back--searing the conscience, hardening the heart, and ruining the soul--the other is growing up to the stature of a perfect man in Christ. Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, he bears his fruit in his season, and all he does shall prosper. THE WORLD--ITS ANTIDOTE.