PROVERBS XII: 15.
"The way of transgressors is hard."
Our friend's career affords a striking example of the truth of the text. Most people do not think the text is true. But the Bible reverses nearly all of our notions about things, and when, in the light of experience and honest thought, we come to examine the Bible, we find it contains the truth on all subjects. The natural effects of a life of sin are injurious and destructive in every particular.
1. In the first place, vice destroys health. If a man indulges in gluttony, he brings on dyspepsia with its accompanying pains and distress and torture. All this is increased by a life of idleness, laziness and inactivity. If he indulges in intemperance, he soon becomes a wretched slave, and is consumed by inward fires till delirium tremens ends the miserable career. If he indulges in sensuality, he is likely to contract loathsome and painful diseases—diseases which make life a burden that can hardly be borne; diseases which poison the blood and can not, by any art or remedy, be expelled from the system, but which are transmitted to the innocent offspring, if there be any.
2. It brings disgrace and drives away friends who would otherwise rally around and help. This poor man spent two terms in the penitentiary, lost all his friends, and had to go to a hospital to die!
3. In destroying one's good name and alienating one's friends, it becomes the cause of poverty and want.
4. It destroys the happiness of families, and in this way adds to the wretchedness of the one who does all this mischief and damage.
5. It often produces insanity.
6. It produces remorse, uneasiness of mind, shame, hatred of self.
7. It is what makes men shudder and shiver like convicts under the gallows, when they think of death and come near death. My own fear of death was something terrible.