If not quite as disastrous, the result is always the same in character. Keep godly associations and connections, attend to the house of God. We need the fellowship of God's people to respiritualize and recharge our depressed Christian lives. It should be a place of strengthening to you. Make its people your special companions and confidants; have some from among its membership with whom you are on terms of intimacy and friendship. It is wonderful how much we are influenced by our environment and fellowship; let us, then, be careful to live with God and with God's people. To conclude,--God help us by His grace and Holy Spirit so to live in this world as to live above it and look beyond it, diligently use the means He has given us for strength and fidelity, and preserve us from the deadly snare of that great enemy of our soul, the godless, Christless world. Nor, let us ever remember, can we successfully meet this enemy without looking for strength to that divine source upon which our eyes are centered at this season, the cross of our adorable Savior. He that kneels in devotion at the foot of the cross, that has the love of Him that suffered and died for us upon that cross spread abroad in his heart, cannot divide that heart with his rival, and enemy, and obtain force and power to combat against his assaults. Without Him we can do nothing. With Him we can prevail. Grant that I Thy passion view With repentant grieving, Nor Thee crucify anew By unholy living. How could I refuse to shun Every sinful pleasure, Since for me God's only Son Suffered without measure? Amen. THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden Him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him; for she is a sinner.--_Luke 7, 39._ Our Lord was reclining at a social meal in the house of Simon the Pharisee, when, unbidden, a woman enters the room, and, standing at the feet of Jesus, bursts into tears. She had not come for that purpose, but stationed aside of the Lord, she was so overcome that she could not restrain her emotion, and as the tears fall thick and fast upon the feet of her Lord, she wipes them with her hair, and kissing them, anoints them with costly ointment. The whole transaction is so simple and touching that we feel at once interested in the stranger. It is a question much discussed by Bible students who this woman was. It has been said it was Mary Magdalene, but that is a mistake; nor was it Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. Her name, for wise and kind reasons, is withheld from the Church. But we are not left entirely in suspense about her history.