Bad Companions.—“Bad company,” wrote Augustine, “is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with very little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.” Of course, it is useless to define bad company. Men and women, boys and girls, feel instinctively when they have fallen in with dangerous associates; if they choose to remain amongst them they are lost. So in the high tides, barks of light draught will float over Goodwin quicksands; in summer at low tide the venturous boys and young people will play cricket thereon: but neither can remain long in the neighbourhood. The time comes when the sands are covered with but a thin surface of water, and beneath is the shifting, loose, wet earth, more dangerous and treacherous than springtide ice; and then it is that to touch is to be drawn in, and to be drawn in is death. So is it with bad company.—The Gentle Life.

Cowardly Retreat.—General Grant relates that just as he was hoping to hear a report of a brilliant movement and victory of General Sigel, he received an announcement from General Halleck to this effect: “Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg; he will do nothing but run; never did anything else.” The enemy had intercepted him, handled him roughly, and he fled.

Vers. 8–10. The Disintegrating Force of Error.—1. Whatever persuasion cometh not of God and is not grounded on the Word of truth, is not to be valued, but looked upon as a delusion (ver. 8). 2. The Church of Christ, and every particular member thereof, ought carefully to resist the first beginnings of sin, for the least of errors and the smallest number of seduced persons are here compared to leaven, a little quantity of which secretly insinuates itself and insensibly conveys its sourness to the whole lump (ver. 9). 3. The minister is not to despair of the recovery of those who oppose themselves, but ought in charity to hope the best of all men, so long as they are curable; and to show how dangerous their error was by denouncing God’s judgment against their prime seducers (ver. 10). 4. So just is God, He will suffer no impenitent transgressor, however subtle, to escape His search, or to pass free from the dint of His avenging stroke, whoever he be for parts, power, or estimation.—Fergusson.

Ver. 9. Reform of Bad Manners.

I. We must resist and withstand every particular sin.—One sin is able to defile the whole life of man. One fly is sufficient to mar a whole box of sweet ointment. One offence in our first parents brought corruption on them and all mankind; yea, on heaven and earth.

II. We must endeavour to the utmost to cut off every bad example in the societies of men.—One bad example is sufficient to corrupt a whole family, a town, a country. A wicked example, being suffered, spreads abroad and does much hurt.

III. We are to withstand and cut off the first beginnings and occasions of sin.—We say of arrant thieves they began to practise their wickedness in pins and points. For this cause, idleness, excessive eating, drinking and swilling, riot, and vanity in apparel are to be suppressed in every society as the breeder of many vices.—Perkins.

Ver. 11. The Perversion of Apostolic Preaching.—There are two attempts or resolves in constant operation as to the cross. One is man’s, to accommodate to human liking and taste; the second is God’s, to raise human liking and taste to it.

I. The aim of man.—The following may be named as the principal exceptions taken to the cross by those who rejected it:—

1. It was an improbable medium of revelation.—Man can talk loudly how God should manifest Himself. Shall the cross be the oracle by which He will speak His deepest counsels to our race?