In a meeting at which we were present, and where from one to two hundred
reformed men were gathered for religious worship, and for help and
counsel, the hymn commencing

"Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,"

was sung. At its close, a man rose from his seat and entered his protest
against the singing of that hymn any more. It is not true, he said, that
the man whom God has converted feels any proneness to wander. He had had
the grace of God in his soul for--we don't remember how many years--and
he could testify that the desire to wander from God's commandments had
been wholly removed. He, therefore, repeated his protest against the use
of a hymn containing a sentiment so dishonorable to a truly saved
Christian. As he sat down, a very young man arose and added the weight
of his testimony to the assertion of his older Christian brother. He
also, in answer to prayer, as he confidently asserted, had attained unto
that higher life which is not only free from sin, but from even the
desire to wander from the ways of holiness.

As we looked into and read the faces of these two men, we sighed for
what we saw therein, and pitied them for the peril in which they stood.
But our greater concern was for the poor, weak, almost helpless ones we
saw around us, and for the effect of this delusive error which had been
so needlessly thrown into their minds. If any of them should rest in
the belief that they, too, had, by the grace of God, been wholly set
free from the bondage of sin; that the appetite for drink and the lust
of all evil had been extinguished, and their proneness to wander from
God taken away in simple answer to prayer, then would their danger, we
felt, be so imminent as to leave but little room for hope of their