whether every child that has come under their observation had not something to learn that was good, and something to unlearn that was evil. Now, whence did this evil come from? It cannot have been taught to the child, for the evil showed itself at a time before all teaching; it had it naturally. And so it is in other things. The good wheat must be sown and looked after, or it will never amount to much. The weeds sprout up and spread of themselves, and it is as great a labor to keep them down as to get the good wheat up. The truth is, "Like begetteth like." "In Adam's fall we sinned all." The fountain was polluted, so is the stream; sin is born in the bone, as it were, and without God's help we can no more mend it than a sick man can mend and cure himself without the help of a physician. But this original sin is not the only kind. Though men deny that, they cannot deny the other, what our Catechism calls Actual Sin. Like trees in the forest does it surround them. Where is the man that dares affirm that he has never been guilty of doing what he should never have done, or guilty of not doing what he should have done? Lives there a person so happy as to look back on the past and feel no remorse, or forward to the future and feel no fear? What? Is there no page of your history that you would obliterate, no leaf that, with God's permission, you would tear from the book of life's story? To David's prayer, "Lord, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions," have you no solemn and hearty Amen? If you could be carried back to the starting-post, and stood again at your mother's knee, and sat again at the old school desk with companions that are now changed, or scattered, or dead, or gone, were you to begin life anew, would you run the selfsame course, would you live over the selfsame life? Is there no speech to unsay, no act to undo, no day, Sunday, or evening to spend better? No one among those with whom you are now living or among those that have gone before--to whom you would bear yourself otherwise than you have done? Where is there a breathing man that can say: "I am pure in my heart. I am clear from all sin"? If he does, he deceives himself, the truth is not in him. As well deny your existence as deny the existence of actual sin. But what men will not deny they will seek to excuse. It were amusing, if it were not a matter so serious, to observe with what palliation and apologies defenses are thrown up by which, after all, men's sins do not look so exceedingly sinful. Thus there be those who say: If we are naturally born to evil, as the Bible says and our experience testifies, we cannot help it, and how can it be a fault of ours if we do wrong? And how can God blame and punish us for not being better than He made us? It is thus that Scotland's famous poet, Burns, sings: Thou knowest that Thou hast formed me With passions wild and strong, And listening to their witching voice Has often led me wrong.