We cannot too frequently, or too solemnly, dwell upon this startling fact. It is a fact established, not by a doubtful text or two, nor by a mere ipse dixit of authority, but by the widest possible observation of life, by a concurrent witness of all teachers and all true religions. No planetary movement, no recurrence of the seasons, no chemical transformation, no physiological growth, no axiom of mathematics, is established on surer or more irrefutable grounds. Sin itself may even be defined, from an induction of facts, as "the act of a human will which, being contrary to the Divine Will, reacts with inevitable evil upon the agent." Sin is a presumptuous attempt on the part of a human will to disturb the irresistible order of the Divine Will, and can only draw down upon itself those lightnings of the Divine power, which otherwise would have flashed through the heavens beautiful and beneficent.

Let us, then, try to impress upon our minds that, not in the one sin of which we have been speaking only, but in all sins alike, certain bands are being woven, certain cords twisted, certain chains forged, which must one day take and hold the sinner with galling stringency.

Every sin is preparing for us a band of shame to be wound about our brows and tightened to the torture-point. There are many gross and generally condemned actions which when they are exposed bring their immediate penalty. To be discovered in dishonourable dealing, to have our hidden enormities brought into the light of day, to forfeit by feeble vices a fair and dignified position, will load a conscience which is not quite callous with a burden of shame that makes life quite intolerable. But there are many sins which do not entail this scornful censure of our fellows, sins with which they have a secret sympathy, for which they cherish an ill-disguised admiration,—the more heroic sins of daring ambition, victorious selfishness, or proud defiance of God. None the less these tolerated iniquities are weaving the inevitable band of shame for the brow: we shall not always be called on only to face our fellows, for we are by our creation the sons of God, in whose image we are made, and eventually we must confront the children of Light, must look straight up into the face of God, with these sins—venial as they were thought—set in the light of His countenance. Then will the guilty spirit burn with an indescribable and unbearable shame,—"To hide my head! To bury my eyes that they may not see the rays of the Eternal Light," will be its cry. May we not say with truth that the shame which comes from the judgment of our fellows is the most tolerable of the bands of shame?

Again, every sin is preparing for us a loss of wealth, of the only wealth which is really durable, the treasure in the heavens; every sin is capable of "bringing a man to a piece of bread,"[93] filching from him all the food on which the spirit lives. It is too common a sight to see a young spendthrift who has run through his patrimony in a few years, who must pass through the bankruptcy court, and who has burdened his estate and his name with charges and reproaches from which he can never again shake himself free. But that is only a superficial illustration of a spiritual reality. Every sin is the precursor of spiritual bankruptcy; it is setting one's hand to a bill which, when it comes in, must break the wealthiest signatory.

That little sin of yours, trivial as it seems,—the mere inadvertence, the light-hearted carelessness, the petty spleen, the innocent romancing, the gradual hardening of the heart,—is, if you would see it, like scratching with a pen through and through a writing on a parchment. What is this writing? What is this parchment? It is a title-deed to an inheritance, the inheritance of the saints in light. You are quietly erasing your name from it and blotching its fair characters. When you come to the day of account, you will show your claim, and it will be illegible. "What," you will say, "am I to lose this great possession for this trifling scratch of the pen?" "Even so," says the Inexorable; "it is precisely in this way that the inheritance is lost; not, as a rule, by deliberate and reckless destruction of the mighty treasure, but by the thoughtless triviality, the indolent easifulness. See you, it is the work of your own hand. His own iniquities shall take the wicked."

Again, every sin is the gradual undermining of the health, not so much the body's, as the soul's health. Those are, as it were, the slightest sins by which "the flesh and the body are consumed." "Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?" Who is stricken and hurt and beaten, bitten as if by an adder, stung as if by a serpent?[94] It is the victim of drink, and every feature shows how he is holden by the cords of his sin. But there is one who is drunk with the blood of his fellow-men, and has thriven at the expense of the poor, who yet is temperate, healthy, and strong. The disease of his soul does not come to the light of day. None the less it is there. The sanity of soul which alone can preserve the life in the Eternal World and in the presence of God is fatally disturbed by every sin. A virus enters the spirit; germs obtain a lodgment there. The days pass, the years pass. The respected citizen, portly, rich, and courted, goes at last in a good old age from the scene of his prosperity here,—surely to a fairer home above?

Alas, the soul if it were to come into those fadeless mansions would be found smitten with a leprosy. This is no superficial malady; through and through the whole head is sick, the whole heart faint. Strange that men never noticed it down there in the busy world. But the fact is, it is the air of heaven which brings out these suppressed disorders. And the diseased soul whispers, "Take me out of this air, I beseech you, at all costs. I must have change of climate. This atmosphere is intolerable to me. I can only be well out of heaven." "Poor spirit," murmur the angels, "he says the truth; certainly he could not live here."

Finally, the worst chain forged in the furnace of sin is Remorse: for no one can guarantee to the sinner an eternal insensibility; rather it seems quite unavoidable that some day he must awake, and standing shamed before the eyes of his Maker, stripped of all his possessions and hopelessly diseased in soul, must recognize clearly what might have been and now cannot be. Memory will be busy. "Ah! that cursed memory!" he cries. It brings back all the gentle pleadings of his mother in that pure home long ago; it brings back all his father's counsels; it brings back the words which were spoken from the pulpit, and all the conversations with godly friends. He remembers how he wavered—"Shall it be the strait and hallowed road, or shall it be the broad road of destruction?" He remembers all the pleas and counterpleas, and how with open eyes he chose the way which, as he saw, went down to death. And now? Now it is irrevocable. He said he would take his luck, and he has taken it. He said God would not punish a poor creature like him. God does not punish him. No, there is God making level all his paths now as of old. This punishment is not God's; it is his own. His own iniquities have taken the wicked; he is held with the cords of his sin.

Here then is the plain, stern truth,—a law, not of Nature only, but of the Universe. As you look into a fact so solemn, so awful; as the cadence of the chapter closes, do you not seem to perceive with a new clearness how men needed One who could take away the sins of the world, One who could break those cruel bonds which men have made for themselves?