Now I speak the truth when I say that by far the greater number of saints who fall in love suffer spiritual loss.  This need not be so.  In the first place, the love for each other must be genuine; but, though God is calling two together and the love which springs up is in the order of the Lord, this does not insure them against spiritual loss.  If they are not watchful they will lose their heads, so to speak, and step away beyond the bonds of propriety.

There is many a young man and young woman united in marriage these days, even young saints, whom wisdom has not directed.  Such may succeed in getting through and escaping the damnation of hell, but they will have trouble in the flesh.

Now, dear young saint, if you desire to be successful in life and gain heaven, if you will keep your senses you can keep clear from all the meshes of unholy affinities.  You desire to have a life companion if God selects you one.  I can not blame you for this, neither does the Bible condemn you; but the utmost caution needs to be exercised.  Be careful your desire for companionship does not turn your head and render you incapable of knowing or understanding the will of God.  Whenever you find yourself losing love for God, you had better beware.  Whenever the object of your affection is getting so upon your heart and mind that you think less of God you are going beyond His ordering.  If your last thoughts in the evening and your earliest thoughts in the morning are of the loved one, you are being estranged from God and losing spiritual life.  I feel like giving you warning and counsel you to move very cautiously and prayerfully in these matters, lest you make a mistake and suffer a loss that neither time nor eternity will ever make up.

Young saints must not keep company with the unsaved.  Those who do, lose spirituality.  If you love God and desire to live a spiritual life, wait on God and let him select your life companion.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

When you entered the Christian race God gave an angel to guard and guide you in the way.  You need have no fear of this world.

Live in God’s service and do his will, and this guardian angel will keep you.  “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.”

It was this angel that stood with Daniel in the den of lions and with the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace.  It was this angel that led the weeping Hagar to the well of water when her child was dying of thirst; and that led the righteous Lot out of the wicked city of Sodom and saved him from its awful burning.  When Elijah was hunted for his life and sat down to weep and to starve under the juniper-tree, it was this guardian angel that brought him a cake and a cruse of water.  It was this good angel that unbolted the prison doors and set Peter free.  When Paul and Silas were lying fast in the stocks singing praise to God at midnight, it was the angel of the Lord that shook the earth and opened the prison doors.