Are you bold in repelling him as your Master was? Are you ready with the retort to every foul suggestion, "Get thee hence, Satan"? Cultivate a tender sensitiveness about sin. The finest barometers are the most sensitive. Whatever be your besetting frailty--whatever bitter or baleful passion you are conscious aspires to the mastery--watch it, crucify it, "nail it to your Lord's cross." _You_ may despise "the day of small things"--the Great Adversary does _not_. He knows the power of _littles_; that little by little consumes and eats out the vigor of the soul. And once the retrograde movement in the spiritual life begins, who can predict where it may end? the going on "from weakness to weakness," instead of "from strength to strength." Make no compromises; never join in the ungodly amusement, or venture on the questionable path, with the plea, "It does me no harm." The Israelites, on entering Canaan, instead of obeying the Divine injunction of extirpating their enemies, made a hollow truce with them. What was the result? Years upon years of tedious warfare. "They were scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes!" It is quaintly but truthfully said by an old writer, "The candle will never burn clear, while there is a _thief_ in it. Sin indulged, in the conscience, is like Jonah in the ship, which causeth such a tempest, that the conscience is like a troubled sea, whose waters cannot rest."--(_Thomas Brooks_.) "Keep," then, "thy heart with all diligence," or, (as it is in the forcible original Hebrew,) "keep thy heart _above all keeping_," "for out of it are the issues of life." (Prov. iv. 23.) Let this ever be your preservative against temptation, "How would _Jesus_ have acted here? would _He_ not have recoiled, like the sensitive plant, from the remotest contact with sin? Can _I_ think of dishonoring Him by tampering with His enemy; incurring from His own lips the bitter reflection of injured love, 'I am wounded in the house of my friends'?" He tells us the secret of our preservation and safety, "Simon! Simon! Satan hath desired to have thee, that he might sift thee as wheat; _but I_ have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not!" "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Twenty-fifth Day. RECEIVING SINNERS. "This man receiveth sinners."--Luke, xv. 2. The ironical taunt of proud and censorious Pharisees formed the glory of Him who came, "not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Publicans and outcasts; those covered with a deeper than any bodily leprosy--laid bare their wounds to the "Great Physician;" and as conscious guilt and timid penitence crept abashed and imploring to His feet, they found nothing but a forgiving and a gracious welcome!