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Rh if I could, or dared. But as with regard to the sin against the Holy Ghost, so here, also, Scripture is silent. "What that measure is," to apply St. Augustine's words, "and what are the sins, which prevent men's attaining to the kingdom of God,—it is most difficult to discover, and most dangerous to define. I certainly, much as I have laboured, have not yet been able to decide anything. Perhaps it is therefore concealed, lest men's anxiety to hold onward to the avoiding of all sin should wax cold.—But now, since the degree of venial iniquity, if persevered in, is unknown, the eagerness to make progress by more instant continuance in prayer is quickened, and the carefulness to make holy friends of the mammon of unrighteousness is not despised ." It is easier to ascertain what are those which are not venial; some, such as sins of the flesh, or idolatrous covetousness, St. Paul has named; yet, even without these, there may be a state of heart, through the accumulation of lesser sins, equally destructive of the Baptismal life. "Despise them not," says the same St. Augustine, "because they are smaller; but fear, because they are more numerous. Attend, my brethren. They are minute; they are not great. It is not a wild beast, as a lion, which destroys life by one grasp,—but human nature is feeble, and may be destroyed by the smallest beasts. So, also, slight sins; ye remark them, because they are small: beware, because they are many. What is smaller than grains of sand? Yet, if much of it be laden into a vessel, it sinks it, that it is lost. How small are drops of rain! Do they not fill rivers, and overthrow houses?"

Yet though it be difficult to determine in the abstract, it is not so much so for one who wishes earnestly to know himself, to ascertain whether he has been, or is in this state of alienation from God, or approximating to it; how wilfully