Now it is a part of our present evil condition from which we must escape, that we know good and evil.  We are in the world where evil exists within us, and about us; we cannot but know it.  True it is, that it was our misfortune to become acquainted with it; this noisome wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp; it would have been far happier for us, no doubt, had we never become aware of their existence.  But that wish is now too late.  We are in the midst of this dismal place, and the question now is, how to escape from it.  We may shut our eyes, and say we will not see objects so unsightly; but what avails it, if the marsh poison finds its way by other senses, if we cannot but draw it in with our breath, and so we must die?  And such is the case of those who now in this present world confound ignorance with innocence.  This is a fatal mistaking of our present condition for our past; there was a time when to the human race ignorance was innocence; but now it is only folly and sin.  For as I supposed that a man lost in one of those noxious swamps might shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure in ignorance, yet the poison would be taken in with his breath, and so he would die:  even thus, whilst we would fain shut the eyes of our understanding, and would so hope to be in safety, our passions are all the time alive and active, and they catch the poison of the atmosphere around us, and we are not innocent, but foolishly wicked.

We must needs consider this carefully; for, to say nothing of wider questions of national importance, who that sees before him, as we must see it, the gradual change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees added knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help wishing that the earlier ignorance of evil might still be continued; and fancying that knowledge is at best but a doubtful blessing?

But our path is not backwards, but onwards.  Israel in the desert was hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had eaten bread to the full; Israel in the desert saw a wide waste of sand, or sandy rock, around him, while in Egypt he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered gardens to which the Nile had given freshness and life.  But that wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan; its dreariness must be exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, and must not drive him back again to the low plain of Egypt.  There is a moral wilderness which lies in the early part of our Christian course; but we must not hope to escape from it but by penetrating through it to its furthest side.

Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which receive us when we have quitted the state of childhood, and before our characters are formed in manhood, do partake somewhat of the character of the wilderness; and it is not unnatural that many should shrink back from them in fear.  We see but too often the early beauty of the character sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence chilled, its tenderness