Oh, reader, let us seriously consider these things. May they ever have a place deep down in these hearts of ours, that are so easily betrayed into sin. How lightly, at times, do we think of that which cost the Lord Jesus every thing—not only life, but that which is better and dearer than life, even the light of God’s countenance! May we have a far deeper sense of the hatefulness of sin. May we most sedulously watch against the bare movement of the eye in a wrong direction; for we may rest assured that the heart will follow the eye, and the feet will follow the heart, and thus we get away from the Lord, lose the sense of His presence and His love, and become miserable, or, if not miserable, what is far worse, dead, cold, and callous—“hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” May God, in His infinite mercy, keep us from falling. May we have grace to watch more jealously against every thing, no matter what, that might defile the head of our consecration. It is a serious thing to get out of communion, and a most perilous thing to attempt to go on in the Lord’s service with a defiled conscience. True it is that grace pardons and restores, but we never regain what we have lost. This latter is set forth with solemn emphasis in the passage of Scripture before us,—“He shall consecrate unto the Lord the days of his separation, and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass-offering; _but the days that were before shall be lost_ [or, shall fall, as the margin reads it], because his separation was defiled.” This is a point, in our subject, full of instruction and admonition for our souls. When the Nazarite became defiled by any means, even by the touch of a dead body, he had to begin over again. It was not merely the days of his defilement that were lost, or let fall, but actually all the days of his previous Nazariteship. All went for nothing, and this simply by reason of touching a dead body. What does this teach us? It teaches this, at least, that when we diverge, the breadth of a hair, from the narrow path of communion, and get away from the Lord, we must return to the very point from which we set out, and begin _de novo_. We have many examples of this in Scripture, and it would be our wisdom to consider them, and also to weigh the great practical truth which they illustrate.