Here again we may find our illustration in the world about us. Approach the camp of a well disciplined army. How quickly you are challenged. Seek to enter it on any side, and a sentinel, alert and suspicious, keeps you at a distance. The foe may be hovering in the darkness of the neighbouring forest, or he may be a hundred miles away, but this makes no difference in the vigilance of the guard. They take {79} no chances. The enemy is abroad, and no man sleeps on his post. Nor is it the known weak points only, or only the side from which the attack is expected, that receives attention. Everywhere strict watchfulness is maintained, while the threatened points are doubly sentinelled. We have in this the picture of what the watch about the beleaguered soul should be. The soul that means to give a good and generous service to God must guard itself at every point. How frequently, when attention is called to some sin, do we think, "Oh, that is not my weakness," or, "That would constitute no temptation to me whatever." Vain, boasting spirit!--trusting to escape from evil by merely natural means! How Satan gloats as he marks one point that is being left unguarded, and waits, alert and observant, for a favourable opportunity for attack. Through long time, months and years it may be, he maintains a steady, subtle work of suggestion, leading the mind little by little, unconsciously because no guard is kept, into an attitude where the temptation we boastingly defied will prove a terrible foe before whose sudden onslaught we shall go down in grievous and ignominious fall. If in truth God has spared us the fall into some sin that happens in the lives of those about us, our safety will lie not in self-congratulation, {80} but in humble thanksgiving that only through the mercy of God have we been spared this stain. "But for the mercy of God, there goes John Bradford," exclaimed a rugged old Christian as a condemned murderer passed by on his way to death. Again, our vigilance must be especially directed against the temptations to which we have already yielded. When a sin has once found entrance, it is easy for it to enter again, not only because experience of the sin itself makes it attractive, but because psychologically it is easy to do the thing we have done before. In my self-examination to-night I find that a certain sin has been committed. Let me mark it over against the morrow that the temptation, if it recur, may be stamped out quickly, lest the fault entering often become habitual, and a binding chain of besetting sin be forged about my soul.