The spiritual life is a world within itself; with joys, with sorrows, I would say also with temptations, peculiarly its own; and he has not advanced far within its borders who has not learnt the truth of that saying, "I beheld, and, lo! by the very gate of heaven was there a road to hell," who has not prayed with holy Herbert for deliverance "from the arrow that flieth by noonday." There is much even in the renewed mind which, if suffered to remain there, would gradually eat away the heart of its strength and purity; something in each believer, which he imagined he had left behind when he forsook all and gave himself up to follow Christ, but he finds that it has rushed after him, like Care in the ancient proverb, and holds to him with as tight a grasp as ever.

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