A Tanned Face

As a man that walks m the stpt, tmawares, before he thinks of it, his cottntenance is ta7ined; so our hearts are defiled by the slightestcojitact with sin’ We have seen men who were quite fair where their hats covered their foreheads, and thoroughly bronzed where the sun had looked upon them. A man’s heart had need be covered with a veil of holy carefulness all over, or the world will get at it, and brown it with evil. Some trades and callings are like a tropical climate, and their blackening effect is soon visible: certain companies are still more so; they make their mark upon the best of men, and that mark is not to their improvement. With difSculty can a man prevent the world’s influencing him for evil; evil communications will corrupt good manners unless a sacred remedy is heartily used. See the efiect of evil upon professors in Jeremiah’s day; he says: “Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.”

Let us, as much as we can, keep ourselves to ourselves, and go quietly through life. A man of eminence, who outlived the French Revolution, was asked how he escaped the guillotine, and he replied, “I made myself of no reputation, and kept silence.” Let us, like him, stay within doors. If we must go forth abroad, it is well to walk on the shady side of the street, by keeping as much out of the world’s influence as we can; and it is also wise to carry with us such holy thoughts and feelings

^5 as may act as a screen to ward off the excessive power of evil. We have no wish to become as black as the inhabitants of this sun-burnt chme, seeing we are not numbered with them, but are here as strangers and foreigners.

Wash me, most blessed Jesus, in that sacred bath which thou hast prepared; for it will make me fair for ever. Black as I now am I shall then be whiter than snow. Renew me, and I shall be without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.