WATCHING.
A GENERAL, after gaining a great victory, was encamping with his army for the night. He ordered sentinels to be stationed all around the camp as usual. One of the sentinels, as he went to his station, grumbled to himself and said,—
"Why could not the general let us have a quiet night's rest for once, after beating the enemy?
I'm sure there's nothing to be afraid of."
The man then went to his station, and stood for some time looking about him. It was a bright summer's night, with a harvest moon, but he could see nothing anywhere; so he said, "I am terribly tired. I shall sleep for just five minutes, out of the moonlight, under the shadow of this tree."
Presently he started up, dreaming that some one had pushed a lantern before his eyes, and he found that the moon was shining brightly down-on him through a hole in the branches of the tree above him. The next minute a bullet whizzed past his ear, and the whole field before him seemed alive with soldiers, who sprang up from the ground where they had been silently creeping onward, and rushed toward him.
Fortunately the bullet had missed him; so he shouted aloud to give the alarm, and ran back to some other sentinels. The army was thus saved; and the soldier said, "I shall never forget as long as I live, that when one is at war, one must watch."
Our whole life is a war with evil. Just after we have conquered it, it sometimes attacks us when we least expect it. For example: when we have resisted the temptation to be cross and pettish, or disobedient, sometimes when we are thinking, "How good we have been!" comes another sudden temptation, and we are not on our guard, and do not resist it. Jesus says to us, "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation."
Parable For Children.