In the chapter of “Spiritual Culture” we have included the subject of Backsliding, not that backsliding is in any sense advantageous to spiritual development, but it is our certain destiny if we do not assiduously employ the means necessary to our growth in grace. By _backsliding_ is meant the gradual turning back or away from God; to apostatize. The Savior gives us warning to “watch and pray,” that we “enter not into temptation.” The tempter will lay in your pathway all things possible to induce you to turn away from God. He will suggest that it is not necessary to pray so much, and we do not have to keep such a strict vigil over our lives and govern and rule the whole by the Word of God. He may tell you that now since you are saved you are safe. God is able to keep you, and you have nothing now to do but to silently fold your arms and sail to heaven on “flowery beds of ease.” There never was a soul created of God or recreated by his Spirit, not excepting the Savior himself, since the day Adam was made of the dust, to this present time, but what Satan has endeavored, by lies and machinations to turn him away from God. Thousands of millions have gone down the rapids of negligence and carelessness, and been lost in the whirlpool of a cold, formal religion. Some teach that the soul once born of God can never apostatize. “Once in grace always in grace,” is the manner in which they state it. We are fully persuaded that the individual who teaches such a doctrine is wholly ignorant of grace and devoid of God’s enlightening Spirit. What would be the need of Christians being warned to “watch and pray, lest they enter into temptation,” if there be no possibility of being overcome by it? If there is never a return to sin after regeneration, why does John say to his little children, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”? 1 John 2:1.