What a mighty influence this world exerts over us! It is ever interweaving something into the framework of our hourly life; drawing a film between the soul and God, and deadening the keenness and sensibility of our spiritual perceptions. There is no moment when it is not upon us. Like the law of gravitation, which universally takes effect wheresoever it is not kept out by a special counteraction, so is it in our intercourse with the world. All the day long there is an influence playing upon us which draws our characters to the surface, and there fixes them; it rushes upon us with an overwhelming torrent; enters into the soul through our eyes and ears, and every inlet of the senses; through our instincts, our wants, and our natural affections; smothering or extinguishing every thing that would lead to something higher; each day drawing a fresh, hard layer over the heart; each energy laying another touch on the deepening character, and every moment fixing its colors with deeper steadfastness, until we live and act as if it were our only home.

For all this, we need a strong counteracting influence. Our life is too outward and visible among the throng of men; we are not enough alone with God; we live in the unreal, and become unreal ourselves. There must be the calmness of intercourse with God. God’s presence is full of reality; and His presence must be the antidote to the withering blight and the hourly infection of this world, and must abolish in us all that is not real and eternal. Never do we so put off the paint and masquerade of life as when alone with Him. The duplicities of the heart, which the world had interweaved, are held in check, and by habitual communion with God are weakened and overcome. This is the only counteracting and transforming influence; and think as we will, we may rely upon it, that, if we are not under it, the world will most surely and deeply conform us to itself.

In our intercourse with it, a thousand tests touch us on every side; and if we would maintain uninterruptedly our communion with God, we must also be watchful. We must watch against sin, against the world, and against self.

We must watch against sin. Nothing so darkens the soul as sin, or produces so deadening an insensibility. And it gains an entrance with inconceivable subtlety. Just as we contract slight peculiarities of manner, tone, and gait, without knowing it, so in like manner, does the soul become warped and darkened by sin. It can hide itself from the conscience; it is most concealed at its highest pitch; and when it is at the worst, it is least perceived-it has no sensible pain. Thus our insensibility becomes continuous. We come to live without any true relation to the presence of God; consenting to the darkness of our own hearts; cold and dead in our affections; formal and lifeless in prayer; and the whole moral and spiritual nature estranged from God. Pride and vanity, self-complacency and envy, scornfulness and wrath- all follow in the train of this spiritual deterioration.

This is the cause of much of the insensibility and deadness of which people so often complain. Sins unconfessed and forgotten lie festering in the dark; and our whole communion with God and our spiritual character suffer in all its parts and powers. It is the deadness and insensibility consequent on this that obstructs the spiritual life, and thrusts itself between the soul and" the presence of God.

For all this, there is only one remedy-immediate confession. Come and throw yourself in to the arms of everlasting Love! Open the heart, with all its sins and stains, to Jesus. His love is the light in which we shall see our sins, and the light in which we shall see them forgiven.

Let nothing harbor or fester in the heart. If sins be allowed to linger, they will only taint and estrange it more; the sins and spiritual decays of to-day will run on into to-morrow, and to-morrow will begin with an inclination to a lower tone. One day heaps its sin upon another, and our spiritual decline gains in speed as it gains in time. In this, there is one specially alarming thought-the degrees are so shadowy, and the transitions so imperceptible, that it is like a motion too slow to be measured by the eye, or so intense as to seem like rest. If we are not much in the presence of the Lord, these decays will be always advancing.

The true secret of preserving our spirituality of mind, and maintaining our communion with God is, to bring our sin to Jesus the moment it is committed, and while it is fresh on the soul. In the street, in the throng, in the routine of every-day life, let the heart go up in unreserved confession. Let us guard against hesitation. Hesitation brings reasons for delay, and delay opens the door for forgetfulness. One moment’s delay brings unknown hindrances. The suggestions of God’s Spirit are like the flowing of the tide, which, taken at the full, will lift us over every bar-tarry and lose them, and we are stranded! Let us go at once to Jesus with them all. So shall the "blood of sprinkling" be precious to our souls, and we too shall " walk with God."

We must watch against the world. On many Christians, this world weighs heavily, and lowers them to its own standard. Only the few rise above it. All its efforts are exerted to shut out the stern reality of the cross. Its pleasures and amusements, its mirth and its songs, its religion and its worship, find no place there, and cannot go with us into the presence of the Lord. Let us watch against the standard and tone of its society, against the spirit of its social life. To mingle with it in safety to the soul there needs gifts the very reverse of which make men its favorites-caution, retirement, silence; and its tone and spirit will surely be caught up unless we are in habitual intercourse with God.

We must watch against self. Unless God be the center of the soul, it will be a center to itself. Such a spirit is a deliberate contradiction of Him who made Himself of no reputation. Let us watch against ourselves; our self-pleasing and self-love; our tempers and our spirits; our inclinations and our aims; our desires and our imaginations; our thoughts and our words. Let us bring them all into His presence. There we shall see them as they are. There we shall learn the true character of them and of ourselves. It the light of His presence there are no illusions. All the colors and shadows, the false and changeful hues, the gloss and the glitter which we put upon ourselves in the world, and even in the light of our own conscience, are there dispelled. Thus shall our souls be filled with His brightness, and we shall ‘’ glorify God both in our bodies and in our spirits, which are God’s."