^ I suppose all you boys have read Baxter's Second Innings. In that fascinating little book every boy is represented as a batsman who is being bowled at with various sorts of bowling — " swifts," •* slows," and " screws." The object is, of course, to find out where is his weak point, to get past his defence, and lay low his wickets, which are honour, truth, and purity. The boy's only chance of playing a strong sound game is to watch every ball very closely. The danger is always that he will get careless and slack; and then, in the moment when he is taking it easy, in comes a swift ball when he was counting on a slow one, and in consequence he comes to grief. You remember the illustration which Henry Drummond gives, in the book, of a boy who, being off his guard for a moment, yields to a swift and sudden tempta- tion, and says what is not true. Sometimes a false word slips off the tongue in this way, which you would give a whole term's pocket-money to recall. You did not remember to do what the Bible suggests — put a watch upon the lips.^
^ Sometimes boys and girls, and men and women, keep steady watch against the big faults, but let the little ones go unheeded.
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Do you remember Baxter's surprise when his captain reminds him that he has to guard something besides wickets. " What ? " says liaxter. "Bails," says the captain. Now, bails are very little things ; but if the bowler succeeds in removing a bail the batsman has come to grief as much as if his middle stump had been up- rooted. You must not talk as if the little faults do not matter. They do. They are " the little foxes that spoil the vines." You must try to guard all your life from temptation. Blessed is he that watcheth and prayeth ; that never sleeps at his post ; that nevsr suffers, and causes others to suffer, from his neglect of duty.i
1 One time, when our soldiers were fighting against Indians in America, a sentry at a very important point was found one morning dead at his post. The guard had heard no sound, and they could not imagine how any one could have come so close to the sentry as to kill him. They thought he must have fallen asleep at his post. Another man was put in his place, and next morning he too was found dead there. So the officer selected a sharp man, and said to him: "Now, let nothing escape you. Shoot at anything that moves. If a dog goes by, shoot him." For an hour or two the man heard nothing stirring. But at last a little twig snapped, and it seemed as if something were softly treading on dry leaves. The sentry's heart beat fast, and he strained his eyes, but could see nothing. After a second or two he was certain something was coming near to him. He called out, " Who goes there ? " but no one answered. The next moment he saw something black and was going to fire, but noticed that it was a small bear moving near a bush a few yards off. So he lowered his rifle, and was going to laugh at himself at the thought of how near he had been to raising an alarm about a little bear. But suddenly the sentry remembered the words, " Shoot anything that moves, whatever it is ! " and he lifted his rifle and let go at the bear. The bear fell, and the guard ran to where they had heard the report. On examining the bear they found it was a bear's skin with a wounded Indian inside it. This Indian, night after night, had approached the sentry, crawling along the ground in the dark skin of the bear, and when near enough had suddenly sprung up and killed him.^
^ I remember a storm that raged over the country some years ago, and that tore up by the roots and levelled to the ground thousands upon thousands of trees in the central counties of Scotland. And the strange thing about it was this: that, although the wind was undoubtedly very strong, yet it was not one bit stronger than the wind of many a previous storm which * C. S. Home. » S. Gregory.
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these trees, now so numerously uprooted, had successfully with- stood. Why, then, did they fall on this occasion ? The answer is, that the wind came from an unusual quarter. It was a storm from the north-west, a direction from which a gale comparatively rarely blows. Had it come from any other quarter of the compass, these trees, accustomed to it, would have remained firmly fixed in the soil ; but it assailed them on a side on which they had not sufficiently rooted, and so had not sufficiently guarded themselves.^
2. The need of watchfulness and prayer springs from the manifoldness as well as the subtlety of temptation. Temptation is made possible by what is in a man, and it is made real by what is about a man. The susceptibilities to it live within him ; the incitements, provocations, inducements, live around him, as it were, in the very air he breathes. It is the adaptation of the outer to the inner, and the openness or sensibility of the inner to the outer, that constitutes the strength of temptation and creates the need of watchfulness. The sentinel eye must be at once outward and inward, prospective and introspective, jealous lest the inner and the outer enemy secretly meet, suddenly agree, and immediately seize and defile the citadel of the soul. The inner conditions that make it possible and the outer forms that make it actual may be reduced to three classes or kinds — social, moral, and intellectual.