O how different the entrance ministered to the careless professor—the fruitless and idle—who keeps his hand in his bosom, or leaning upon his implements! Though he may reach the shore with his life, it will be at midnight, surrounded by roaring tempests, full of bitter remembrances and most tormenting fears. Yet, with tattered sails and broken ropes, peradventure he may gain the port; “for the Lord is good, and his mercy endureth for ever.” But who shall describe the condition of the ungodly, driven out to sea in all their wickedness; not even allowed a quarantine within sight of the heavenly Jerusalem, but obliged to drift about, dismantled and disabled, amid the darkness of eternal storms! Oh! to be forced from their moorings at midnight, when they cannot see a handbreadth before them; the thunders rolling; the lightnings flashing; strange voices of wrath mingling with every blast; and the great bell of eternity tolling a funeral knell for the lost soul, through all its dismal, and solitary, and everlasting voyage! Let us flee for refuge, to lay hold on the hope set before us, which hope is as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, grasping the Rock of Ages within the vail! III. THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT IN DRY PLACES. I SEE the wicked spirit, like a winged dragon, having a long tail, drawing circles and flying in the air, in search of a dwelling-place. Casting his fiery look upon a certain neighborhood, he spies a young man, in the bloom of his days, and in the strength of his powers, sitting on the box of his cart, going for lime. “There he is,” says the old hellish dragon; “his veins are full of blood, and his bones are full of marrow; I will cast the sparks into his bosom, and will set all his lusts on fire; I will lead him on from bad to worse, until he commit every sin. I will make him a murderer, and will plunge his soul for ever beneath the boiling billows of the great fiery furnace.” With this, I see him descending in all the vehemence of his character—but when close by the lad, the dragon hears him sing, “When on the cross the Saviour hung, The mid-day sank in midnight gloom; When guilty sinners were redeemed, The midnight burst in mid-day bloom.” Upon which the dragon cries out, “This place is too dry for me,”—and away he flies.