THE KING’ S BUSINESS
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up and down. O h ! the misery o f the human mind that is haiunted with the, ghosts o f bad deeds that have been done in the past. It is bondage o f the keenest and sorest kind. There is liberty from these to those who walk in God’s- statutes, liberty that can be had nowhere "else. “A new heart will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you. I will take away the stony heart out o f your flesh, and I will give you a heart o f flesh.” Happy are they to whom this word was fulfilled in their early youth, and who in consequence were kept from the s’ins, the vety recollection o f which is sometimes like the beginning o f hell. SINFUL BONDAGE s There is bondage to bad associates and bad associations. In how many instances, in thoughtlessness, inexperience, under the impulses o f mere feeling, do men become entangled in connections that mar their lives and spoil all their happiness—make happiness !practically impossible! I speak what I know, when I say that there are too many cases in which boys are prac tically ruined where they go/, as pupils to Schools away from their parents’ super vision, thrown into dependence, in some degree, Upon those whom they call friends, and these friends bad, initiating them into ways and habits and modes o f thinking and doing, for which they only want the liberty o f .later years that they may put them into practise,. with disgrace, misery and ruin. Relief from this bondage, escape from it, these can be had when we seek God’s statutes, when we walk,according to His precepts. Wisdom’s ways are pleas antness, and her paths are peace. There are no bad habits in them; there are no entangling associations in them; there are no corrupting'and degrading influences in them. There is nothing in them that plays upon passion, till passion, once our idol and our sport, becomes our ruler and our cruel tyrant. T o escape all these, this is the w ay: seek God’s statutes, that you may know and do them, and you shall walk at liberty.
ning, perhaps, with necessary saving, but Coming slowly but steadily to a sordid love of the thing that is . saved till the ,whole spirit is mercenary, and gold is the deity that is practically worshiped. There is the • drunkard, sipping a little innocently, as he thinks, at the beginning, then going a little farther, and secretly, until shame is lost and the victim is under the power o f the drink—degraded, wretched', irre sponsible, not ashamed o f . himself, for shame is gone, but an object for which all are, ashamed that are connected - with him. There is the gambler, beginning per haps with what he deemed innocent recre ation, and catching the spirit o f the thing till it masters him, until he flings away all that he has, and all that he hopes to have, in the chance o f recovering something already lost, till life is a burden and for tune is gone, and suicide is perhaps the tragical termination. These are specimens o f the bad ways—-marked specimens, I grant, but still simple specimens. There is freedom from this when we seek and do God’s statutes—real freedom. We. learn to walk circumspectly; "we learn to keep the .heart with all diligence; we learn to hate evil and do g ood ; we learn to flee from the snares that Satan sets for the feet of men. W e walk securely, for we have been taught o f the Spirit to walk with God. Make sure, dear hearers, that yorr have this liberty. There is liberty from bad memories—bad, ■putrid memories. When the corrupt imagi nation contemplates indulgerfce in sin, it often dwells upon these long before the actual execution o f them, and as they linger in the mind they'photograph them selves upon its surface and they stay there. There may be compunction for the sin, there may be shame Over it, there may be vows against it, there may be honest 'pur poses to resisf and overcome it, and these purposes to a good degree carried out; but the horrid, poisonous memories remain in the soul. You know what it is to be in a house where animal matter is decaying and 1poisoning fumes are being scattered
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