But if the heart be deceitful, sin is scarcely less so.  When the poor boy first clutched his prize, as he esteemed it, he promised himself nothing but pleasure and profit, but how miserably was he deceived!  After he had converted the draft into money, and thus rendered its return impossible without detection, he saw his guilt in its true character, and for many nights tossed in torment on a sleepless bed, while at last he was made to take his place along with hardened convicts in a city prison.  Thus it always is with sin.  Like the book the apostle ate in vision, it is sweet as honey in the mouth, but bitter in the belly.  Like the wine Solomon describes, it may sparkle in the cup and shoot up its bright beads on the surface, but at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.  The experiment has been tried times without number, from the beginning in Eden down to our own day, by communities and by individuals, but invariably with the same result.  The way of transgressors is hard, however it may seem to them who are entering upon it a path of primrose dalliance.  And surely “whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”

Finally, how needful is it to pray—­“Lead us not into temptation.”  Snares lie all around us, whether old or young, and it is vain to seek an entire escape from their intrusion.  The lad we are considering, had not gone out of his way to meet the temptation by which he fell.  On the contrary, he was doing his duty, he was just where he ought to have been.  Yet there the adversary found him, and there he finds every man.  The very fact that one is in a lawful place and condition is apt to throw him off his guard.  There is but one safeguard under grace, and that is habitual watchfulness.  Without this the strongest may fall—­with it, the feeblest may stand firm.  O for such a deep and abiding conviction of the keenness of temptation and the dreadful evil of sin as to lead all to cry mightily unto God, and at the same time be strenuous in effort themselves—­to pray and also to watch.

* * * * *

Original.

MEMOIR OF MRS. VAN LENNEP.

The following review, written by Mrs. D.E.  Sykes, of the Memoir of Mrs. M.E.  Van Lennep, we deem among the finest specimens of that class of writings.  The remarks it contains on the religious education of daughters are so much in point, and fall in so aptly with the design of our work, that we have obtained permission to publish it.  We presume it will be new to most of our readers, as it originally appeared in the New Englander, a periodical which is seldom seen, except in a Theological Library.

An additional reason for our publishing it is, our personal interest both in the reviewer, who we are happy to say has become a contributor to our pages, and the reviewed—­having been associated with the mothers of each, for a number of years, in that most interesting of all associations, “The Mother’s Meeting.”