Christian reader, let us watch against the tendency to slip aside from the narrow, yet safe, the _sometimes_ rough, yet _always_ pleasant, path of simple, wholehearted obedience. Let us keep guard--jealous, careful guard--over "faith and a pure conscience," for which nothing can compensate. Should trial come, let us, instead of turning aside into Egypt, wait on God; and thus the trial, instead of proving an occasion of stumbling, will prove an opportunity for obedience. Let us, when tempted to slip into the course of the world, remember him "who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God, and our Father." (Gal. i. 4.) If such was his love for us, and such his sense of the true character of this present world, that he gave himself, in order to deliver us from it, shall we deny him by plunging again into that from which his cross has forever delivered us? May God Almighty forbid! May he keep us in the hollow of his hand, and under the shadow of his wings, until we see Jesus as he is, and be like him, and with him forever. CHAPTER XIII. The opening of this chapter presents to us a subject of immense interest to the heart,--namely, the true character of divine restoration. When the child of God has, in any way, declined in his spiritual condition, and lost his communion, he is in great danger, when conscience begins to work, of failing in the apprehension of divine grace, and of stopping short of the proper mark of divine restoration. Now, we know that God does every thing in a way entirely worthy of himself. Whether he creates, redeems, converts, restores, or provides, he can only act like himself. What is worthy of himself is, ever and only, his standard of action. This is unspeakably happy for us, inasmuch as we would ever seek to "limit the Holy One of Israel;" and in nothing are we so prone to limit him as in his restoring grace. In the case now before us, we see that Abraham was not only delivered out of Egypt, but brought back "unto the place where his tent had been _at the beginning_, ... unto the place of the altar which he had made there _at the first_: and there Abraham called on the name of the Lord." Nothing can satisfy God, in reference to a wanderer or backslider, but his being entirely restored. We, in the self-righteousness of our hearts, might imagine that such an one should take a lower place than that which he had formerly occupied; and so he should, were it a question of his merit or his character; but, inasmuch as it is, altogether, a question of grace, it is God's prerogative to fix the standard of restoration; and his standard is set forth in the following passage: "If thou wilt return, O Israel, return _to me_." It is thus that God restores, and it would be unworthy of himself to do any thing else. He will either not restore at all, or else restore in such a way as to magnify and glorify the riches of his grace. Thus,