But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular condition, is not enough for security. We are not only to forbear evil; virtue requires that we should be exercised for the purposes of good. She lacked the moral strength which such exercises, constantly pursued, would have assured her. She was a creature of impulse only, not of reflection. Besides, she was ignorant of her particular weaknesses. She was weak where she thought herself strong. This is always the error of a person having a very decided will. The will is constantly mistaken for the power. She could not humble herself, and in her own personal capacities--capacities which had never before been subjected to any ordeal-trial--she relied for the force which was to sustain her in every situation. Fancy a confident country-girl--supreme in her own district over the Hobs and Hinnies thereabouts--in conflict with the adroit man of the world, and you have the whole history of Margaret Cooper, and the secret of her misfortune. Let the girl have what natural talent you please, and the case is by no means altered. She must fall if she seeks or permits the conflict. She can only escape by flight. It is in consideration of this human weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to suffer us to be exposed to temptation. When the personal resources of her own experience and mind failed Margaret Cooper, as at some time or other they must fail all who trust only in them, she had no further reliance. She had never learned to draw equal strength and consolation from the sweet counsels of the sacred volume. Regarding the wild raving and the senseless insanity, which are but too frequently the language of the vulgar preacher, as gross ignorance and debasing folly, she committed the unhappy error of confounding the preacher with his cause. She had never been taught to make an habitual reference to religion; and her own experience of life, had never forced upon her those sage reflections which would have shown her that TRUE religion is the very all of life, and without it life has nothing. The humility of the psalmist, which was the real source of all the strength allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread lesson with her; and never having been tutored to refer to God, and relying upon her own proud mind and daring imagination, what wonder that these frail reeds should pierce her side while giving way beneath her. It was this very confidence in her own strength--this fearlessness of danger (and we repeat the lesson here, emphatically, by way of warning)--a confidence which the possession of a quick and powerful mind naturally enough inspires--that effected her undoing. It was not by the force of her affections that she fell. THE AFFECTIONS ARE NOT APT TO BE STRONG IN A WOMAN WHOSE MIND LEADS HER OUT FROM HER SEX!