in your house is harder to destroy than a lion at your door. You can make a fence so strong and high as to keep your neighbor's bull out of your corn-field, and the prudent farmer always does this; but the mole may trace your rows of young corn and kill your crop in a night. So may the crows and the blackbirds in a day. We look out for big foxes and provide against them if we are prudent men and women, but we too seldom watch for the little ones until it is too late. Our little sins come upon us unawares, and tear our vines before we recognize their presence; and, worse than all, we so neglect their appearance or so ignore their growth and power that we become the prey of the full-grown brood before we are concerned about our condition. "Take care of the nickels, and the dollars will take care of themselves;" and what is true of money is true of virtues. Keep down the little sprouts of sin, and there will be no trees to cut down when they have grown big and old and hard. Finally, let me say that the little foxes spoil our vines very easily, because "our grapes are tender grapes." Therefore we should be more on the alert to take them when "little," and before the work of devastation begins. The grape is a very tender fruit, easily spoiled at best; but the grapes of the Christian vine are the tenderest ever grown. Nothing is so easily soiled as Christian reputation or character, and nothing is so readily tainted and poisoned as Christian purity and piety. All other reputation and character can stand a greater shock, in the world's eyes at least; and all other virtue or integrity may stand a greater strain or a fouler touch under the pressure of temptation or contamination unless it be the good name and the chastity of a woman.

Nothing, according to human standards, is so delicate and spotless as religion, especially the Christian religion; and by reason of our weak and vile natures, our susceptibility to doubt and declension, our subjection to Satanic art and delusion, our every-day contact with worldliness and temptation, our purity and piety are most readily polluted and blighted; and when we are so blackened and corrupted we are the most conspicuous and the worst hurt of all other creatures. The whiter the angel's wing the more easily spotted. The holier and higher Lucifer was before he fell the blacker and fouler he seems and is in his degradation. How easily, apparently, one little sin overthrew the stainless Adam and Eve! and what woe and wickedness have followed! The loftier the being and the whiter he is the lower his fall and the blacker his character, and the greater are the consequences to him and to others. The purer and holier the heart the more delicate the touch needed to stain it and befoul it; and hence our vines are said to bear very "tender grapes." Hence the great importance too of keeping out the little foxes that spoil the vines. In order to this we should kill down every outcropping of unbelief, of infidelity, of passion, and appetite. Kill this brood' of vipers while they are little, and don't wait for the little brood to grow up and breed other broods, as is too often the case. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil our vines, for our vines have tender grapes." O for the cultivation of that early, that constant and assiduous piety which keeps down the little sins, and which in the course of religious development inures to that peace and prosperity which flow like a river and which are never marred by the touch of great transgressions or misfortunes!

A FIGHT WITH CONSCIENCE:

IN FOUR ACTS.

HE first picture in this sketch represents a man on the eve of doing something wrong and determined in his course. He is plotting some scheme of meanness or measure of villainy for which he has not the consent of his

conscience. It is a matter of no difference here what that scheme or measure is. It may be that he is devising a great plan to swindle his fellow-man-for instance, some patent medicine discovery or invention. He may be designing to gratify some base passion, or to debauch himself by debasing appetite. Perhaps he is plotting robbery, murder, or seduction. Whatever his purpose, he is bent on evil just the same; and in the first act, or picture, we discover him in debate with his better angel-his conscience. Dallying in the lap of sin, he is parleying with his conscience, and the controversy seems hot and furious. This is always the case when conscience gets the better of the argument with a man bent on evil, guided by evil impulses, or misjudged purposes. The first step in vice or crime is always slow, cautious, hesitating, and full of trepidation, and so in every step of a man with conscientious scruples and convictions; but when his purpose is