And when was it otherwise? Who ever tasted, touched, or handled what pollutes, and yet continued pure? Who ever threw in their lot with godless men, without incurring the risk of sharing their doom? Do not worldly engrossments steal the heart from God? When we have goods laid up for many days, is it not our instant thought, unless a double portion of grace be sought, that we are less dependent now on the Author of every good and perfect gift? The soul thus withers and pines; and if a child of God escape, it is as Lot did from Sodom--"so as by fire." Just as a dislocated limb gives pain to the body, or just as one member wrenched by violence from the rest makes the whole physical frame quake and quiver, the dislocation of a single precept of God does violence to our moral nature. It has been often noticed that the men who are deprived, by whatsoever cause, of the Sabbath rest, soon become the most degraded in a community, they have perished sometimes by their own right hand; and the remark may be generalized so as to include all the laws among the Ten. The man who runs greedily after gain and forgets to consecrate it to God, is thereby self-degraded, and self-ruined in the end. COUNSELS. But perhaps all that we have argued might have been more briefly and more emphatically urged in a few words: "They first gave themselves to the Lord."[19] That is the true order of procedure on the part of Christian men, and that is the certain prelude to heavenly guidance. All that we have will be dedicated to the Great Proprietor, if we have first learned, as the Spirit teaches, to "present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." * * * * * THE ONLY RULE.