SERMON XVIII – William Elbert Munsey
RETRIBUTION.
” Be sure your sin will find you out.” — Num. 32:23.
THIS is no philosophical aphorism, no empty threatening, but the language of Divine inspiration, clothed with the eternal truth of Him who cannot lie, and backed by the arm of inexorable Justice which will sooner or later verify it. Apply it where you will, to the church, to its members, to the penitent weeping at the altar, to the minis- try, to the sinner revelling in his midnight debaucheries or to a nation that has forgotten God— wherever there is sin collectively or individually, it will rind the sinner out.
I. By the exposure of the sinner so that he will be recognized in his character as a sinner, whenever brought in con- tact with understanding beings. The truth of this proposition is evident from the fact that sin contains the principles of its own development and manifestation. Whatever exists in man’s moral or intellectual nature naturally develops and manifests itself in the life. It will work out in the life a re- sult corresponding with it in character with the certainty of cause and effect. Sin exists in both the intellectual and moral nature ; its principle unbelief, in the intellect ; its essence enmity to God, in the moral nature. And whatever be the philosophic relation of the principle and essence of sin to each other, they are both simultaneous and active causes with relation to the life. If unbelief, the antipode of Evangelical faith, be in the mind, and enmity to God be in the heart, this composes man’s nature as a whole, and a man’s life will correspond to a greater or less degree with his nature.
True, men have not always accomplished all their natures prompted them to do ; but this does not affect the truth of the doctrine that the character of men’s natures manifests itself in their lives, but may be attributed to the restraining power of God’s grace, to the hand of His power in the ad- ministration of His government, to the authority of law, both Divine and human, made terrible by a penalty, the influence of public sentiment, and the difficulties involved in the execution of many things. But this restraining power has never been so great, but what men, if they act at all, though they may not act in a degree equal to their intellectual and moral obliquities, yet always act in harmony with their natures, and not contrary to them. This, they do from necessity.
Universal experience attests the truth of this position, and all men act upon the assumption that it is so, for character is always judged by the conduct. Christ recognized the truth of this doctrine when He taught that a tree was known by its fruit. Sin in the nature leads to bad conduct ; false- hood, slander, theft, blasphemy, fornication, adultery, idola- try, murder, drunkenness, and a host of other kindred evils, bantlings of darkness nursed upon the knees of sin of various degrees of criminality, which like a cloud of devouring locusts upon the wing of the hurricane, have descended into the gar- den of God, and devoured all its beauty. If the lives of men can be seen and recognized as good or evil, and sin in the mind always issues in the life, then sin, however men may try to conceal it, will expose the sinner, and exposing him will find him out.
Sin will find the sinner out by the inevitable tendency of its nature to progress to ampler, more palpable, and criminal developments, I will present you several illustrative amplifications of this thesis. 1. Sin is the most insidious and subtle thing in the world. It insinuates itself so gradually and slowly into the habits and principles of men, thai they know not its progress and strength till the nature is so corrupted as to be capable of the darkest crimes. 2. The elements and acts of sin, however small, diminish in proportion to their criminality from every thing that is good in the nature, and in the same ratio give and increase the predisposition of the nature to wrong, and capacitate it for more flagrant acts — and on acceleratively. 3. The elements and acts of sin, however small, deaden and harden the moral sensibilities, therefore lessen the power of moral resistance to wrong, and sins increase in number and magnitude, the power of moral resistance growing weaker in tne same ratio, till the man is prepared to commit crimes of the greatest turpitude, and with the greatest facility. 4. The nature of sin is such, and the nature of the fallen man is such, that in the same proportion men sin, their love for sin increases, therefore the inevitable tendency of the nature of sin to progress to ampler, more palpable, and criminal developments. 5. The elements and acts of sin are like the simple pustule which becomes an ulcer, increasing in accelerated virulence and purulency, till it eats up and destroys the whole system, and the man is a putrid, loathsome carcass of death. The disease in the form of a pustule may be hidden, but if its tendency is to assume the form of an ulcer concealment becomes impossible. The sinner may successfully succeed in hiding sin in its incipient stages, but if its tendency is to a chronic ulceration terminating in a moral gangrene, its disclosure is a certainty.
That sin will progress to ampler and criminal developments. Take Hazael, King of Syria, for an illustration. Be- fore Hazael became king, Elisha said to him, ” I know what evil thou wilt do unto the children of Israel : their strong- holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child.” Hazael said, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing ? ” Yet he was led by the insidious, subtle, and progressive nature of sin to commit the barbarities which the prophet predicted, and which he viewed at the time of the prediction with the great- est horror. Peter was in earnest when he said to Christ, ” Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.” But notice the progressive nature of sin : He is seen following Christ afar off, he is found in bad company, he is heard blaspheming and denying his Lord. Now, if this is the nature of sin, it will expose the sinner, and exposing the sinner will find him out.
Sin will find the sinner out by exposing him to the public cognizance by its transforming power. Have you not seen an aspiring and promising intellect wrecked in mid-life by sin and dissipation : the judgment impaired, the memory weakened, the imagination corrupted and its fire burning only with a fitful and unhealthy glare — the intellect trans- formed into an imbecile monstrosity visible in the entire life of the person ? Have you not seen modesty transformed by some infernal alchemy into effrontery, love into hatred, philanthropy into misanthropy, benevolence into churlishness, meekness into anger, confidence into distrust, faith into in- fidelity, hope into despair, a delicate and correct appreciation of the true, the beautiful and the Good, into an utter dumbness and obtuseness of every ennobling sensibility; the entire moral and social nature changed into a transformation at once abnormal, bestial and fiendish — a transformation seen in every relation in life, and which sin could only produce, and too patent for concealment. Have you not seen the polished decorum of the gentleman changed into the boor- ish vulgarism of the barbarian, the courtesy and suavity of a lady changed into the discourtesy and captiousness of a crabbed shrew; both changes wrought by sin, and too percep- tible for denial. Sin will expose the sinner by transforming the mind, soul, and character.
But sin will expose the sinner by transforming the body also. An Italian artist seeing a little boy of exquisite beauty and loveliness, painted the child’s portrait, and hung it up in his studio as a type of heaven, his ideal of the spiritual and good. He resolved that if ever he found a living contrast to that sweet boy he would paint it also, and hang it by the side of the other as a type of hell, his idea of the sensual and wicked. Many years afterwards, in a distant country, in a prison, he saw the most frightful and horrid demon in human flesh he ever beheld. His eyes were ablaze with lust, and his cheeks bore the deep imprints of crime. He remem- bered his resolution, and painted the hideous face, and upon his return hung it beside the portraiture of the little boy. The painter’s dream was now realized, the antipodes of the moral universe hung upon the walls of his studio, side by side. But imagine the painter’s surprise when he found, upon inquiry, that the pictures were of the same person — that loathsome wretch was once that little boy. His picture in innocent childhood, his picture in criminal manhood, are now hanging side by side in a Tuscan picture gallery.
Man’s internal feelings imprint themselves upon his face, speak in his eyes, and sound their names in his voice. Joy, ecstasy, hope, despair, love, pity, remorse, abstraction, amazement, fear, hatred, rage, revenge, terror, etc., have their appropriate facial phenomena, and to a greater or less degree, in marvellous uniformity write their respective names in the human countenance, readable by all men. The face, says an author, is the playground of thought and feeling. Let the same system of feeling be persisted in, and in time they will leave their hard-trodden track upon the lines of the face, that all observers may read. How wonderful that qualities of character can express themselves in fibrous and muscular contractions and dilatations, in the combination and curvature of cuticular lines furrowing the facial superfice. But such is the truth, and more — a man may change his character, yet his face like a palimpsest will often bear, though it may be in imperfect tracery, the express of his original character lying behind the more modern expressions of a character reformed. Character will exhibit itself in the face. The external man will be moulded and fashioned into a likeness corresponding with the internal man. Says an old poet :
” For of the soul, the body form doth take ;
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Sin cannot lie concealed in the soul — it will out.
The first proposition advanced for a brief elaboration, dis- cussion, and illustration, was this : sin will find the sinner out, by the exposure of the sinner so that he will be recog- nized in his character as a sinner, whenever brought in con- tact with understanding beings. The truth of this proposi- tion I have established by three short arguments : i. Sin contains the principles of its own development and manifestation. 2. Sin will find the sinner out by the inevitable tendency of its nature to progress to ampler, more palpable, and criminal developments. 3. By exposing the sinner to the public cognizance by its transforming power.
II. Sin will find the sinner out by the exposure of the especial principle and act of sin of which the sifiner is guilty. Often in this life. If avarice be in the heart, according to principles already discussed and illustrated, the avaricious life will disclose it, hence we say, “an avaricious man.” If lasciviousness be in the heart, a debauched and sinful life will disclose it. It is so with pride, and other sins, all to a greater or less degree. Some men are not known as sinners only, but as guilty of certain sins. Not only are sinful principles often disclosed in this life, but sinful acts. If the tins be flagrant offences, it seems that a disclosure sooner or later is almost inevitable. Hundreds of instances might be quoted where a murderer wrought his sins in the -dark, yet was exposed by a Providential concurrence of circumstances quite miraculous. Sometimes the murderer’s awful secret burned his soul with such an incessant, unmitigated, and unquench- able torment, that a confession was a relieftill he was driven to confession or suicide, and suicide was confession.
If not in this life, every individual and especial sin will be made known in that great day. Hear the two passages of Scripture of general application : ”Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart.” ” God shall bring every work into Judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Terrible verses ! ” Will bring to light the hidden things of darkness” — wicked principles and acts now con- cealed, wicked principles and acts now veiled in the darkness of obscurity and secrecy ; wicked acts wrought in the night. ” Will make manifest the counsels of the hearts ” — a publica- tion of the designs, plans, and purposes of the mind. Many an individual action believed to be good by the outside world when performed, will then appear very corrupt when the de- signs of the action will be manifest. Many of us will appear awfully strange, and awfully different, when our motives will be as manifest as our acts. Some men will then shine the brighter ; others will lose a large portion of their lustre, I fear. ” Every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil”— all secrets, good and evil— secrets of thought, secrets of imagination, secrets of intention, secrets of mo- tive, secrets of influence, secrets of character, secrets of sensuality, secrets of conduct, will be brought into the Judgment and there exposed. Who is ready for such a disclosure ?
Hear two- verses more specific in their application-: (i But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” That is idle words, or words spoken idly, which have a posi- tive evil in them. Many of the useless words often used in social life are not of themselves sinful. The Greek implies hurtful idle words. Such words though whispered, will in the Judgment be made manifest. ” God shall bring every work into Judgment.” ” Be sure your sin,” your special sin, ” will find you out.” Nothing that you have ever done will be lost. Such is the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures : but I intend to urge its truth to-day from several scientific considerations. For several years, some theories have been floating upon the waves of science, deemed rather too un- certain and speculative in detail, to be dignified as scientific conclusions, and assigned a stationary rank and place upon the pages of a well-accredited philosophy, yet involving a principle too well-established to be dissociated from the philosophy of the day, and cast into the vast heap of scientific monstrosities and speculative heresies, which contain the remains of the ruined philosophic systems of the mediaeval ages. Whether they be true in extenso or not, they involve a great principle of scientific truth too well-established to need a defence from me. You may have read them many a time, and threw them aside without a moment’s thought, but I wish to reproduce them for you to consider more carefully. Their reproduction and presentation now can possibly do no harm, and may do good.
I. Your words are immortalized by atmospheric, and may be, by ethereal vibrations too. Every word you have uttered, whether it be good or evil, loud or soft, cheerful or sad, musical or discordant, may have produced vibrations in thd air, and modifications of atmosphere, proceeding according to regular laws and working with mathematical precision through all the necessary changes of an atmosphere burdened and agitated with a multiplicity of sounds, preserving the word, its measure and intonation, to be revealed in the great day upon the wing of the wind, and the folding pages of the tempest. It is scientifically evident that there is a rare ele- ment or medium existing coextensively with the universe. Between the atmosphere of this world and other orbs there is something, not a mere vacuum, for comets meet with re- sistance. If a vacuum, we could not receive light from the sun. We do not have light in virtue of the emission or pro- jection of particles of matter from the sun, which was the old Newtonian or corpuscular theory, but through the instru- mentality of a medium thrown into undulations by the sun- by the vibrations of a medium, like sound is conveyed through the atmosphere. This medium is supposed to be even more rare, subtile, and elastic than air, and is called ether. This theory has of late been the one generally re- ceived by scientific men.
As distinguished from this undulatory theory, there is another which is commanding the attention of men of science, namely : that c ‘ light is but a polar tension of ether, evoked by a central body in antagonism with the planets.” Upon the assumption of the truth of either of the last-mentioned theories that there is a medium or rare element existing coextensively with the universe, and that this medium is capable of conveying sound by vibrations : if this be true, your words then may travel by vibrations through this medium throughout creation, and be now sounding along the halls and echoing amid the arches and columns of eternity, and sound there forever, God and angels intelligently hearing. There is a room in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, so constructed that if you whisper upon one side of it, the whisper is heard distinctly at the other side. It is called the ” Whispering Gallery.” Now, you are standing in a great whispering gallery where every word and whisper are not only heard to heaven, but probably on the other side of the universe, and the peculiar aerial and ethereal vibration both may preserve them forever. Oaths, curses, prayers, are out beyond recall, and the winds this day may be reciting them to the angels. If by oppression and cruelty you have made the widow moan and the orphan wail, that moan and wail may be travelling still, and will probably come shrieking into the ears of the Judgment.
2. Your actions are immortalized by light. Stand before a mirror, or speculum, and the luminous waves undulating from your person impress your image there. Whatever ex- pression of face you wear, or whatever attitude you assume, the image exactly corresponds with it. In the space between your person and the mirror the image passes, and is as com- plete in its passage in every inch of the intervening space, as reflected in the mirror, yet you cannot see it. The mirror completely stops the ethereal undulations, put into motion by your person, and from its polished surface reflects them back upon you, hence you see your image. This shows that these luminous waves are capable of transmitting the perfect image of any body from which they proceed. If they transmit it from your person to the mirror true as life, you being the judge, then there being nothing to obstruct them they can transmit it true as life to the utmost limits of their extension, and no man has dared to assign a limit.
Now, remove the mirror, and there being no obstruction to stop the waves of ethereal molecules and throw them back upon your vision that you may see yourself, they sweep on forever with your perfect image • and in popular language, the rays continually departing with your every change of expression, form, or posture, weave into the delicate texture of their,. flying pencils the consecutive history of your every action, from your birth to your burial, from your first appearance till you pass out of sight. The successive actions of your life borne upon the successive vibrations of the universal ether, have linked out your history in one consecutive chain, glittering in its ever-increasing length in the blaze of God’s cognizance and the brightness of angelic cognition. To read your life, God need but flash His great eye along the chain of your individual history, beginning at its ulterior end, and terminating where it interlinks with your last act. Or if angels wish to read it, they need but begin at the same point and track with steady wing the pathway of the ethereal undulations, coming this way, and reading as they come, till they reach you, the agent ; or standing upon the remotest circumference of eternity’s grand circle, there, wait and read as the undulations arrive and pass by — waving on till they strike the dark walls marking the boundaries of the kingdom of Night, and reflected back duplicate your history on the other side of the universe.
This moment, some angel on some point in the immense fields of the nebulae may be reading your birth, your life, and long after you are dead from the fresh arriving vibrations read your funeral. And as there is no night so dark but there is some light, and as light is more subtile than the organism of the human eye is delicate, and therefore may be present without the eye perceiving it, so there may be enough light present in the darkest night to preserve by ethereal vibrations the nocturnal actions of men that the stronger eye of God and spirits may be able to take cognizance of their images. Or if it is true that the chemical rays and not the luminous are used in the process of photographing, and that presence of the chemical rays does not argue the presence of the luminous, then, again, human actions wrought in the dark may be pictured in the immense galleries of the universe to be seen by angels, God, yourself and fellows by and by. Is it true that the images of all our actions are now sweeping upon the wings of light in pictured and panoramic grandeur before the eyes of God and angels — or unerasibly and in- effaceably pencilled or photographed in unerring truthfulness to be gazed at forever ?
3. Your thoughts are immortalized by Electricity. You see in nature that certain elements have an affinity for each other, and that they combine and form compounds. You see that crystals of the same substances in crystallization, always crystallize in the same way and form, each crystal hav- ing the same angles and points, as is seen in nitre, salt, and sugar. The question naturally arises, What is the secret of chemical affinities and combinations, and the secret of the phenomena of crystallization ? Science answers, The formative power and presence of electricity. The phe- nomena of the heavenly bodies within telescopic reach, declare the existence of compounds and crystallization with them. The presumption is, therefore, that electricity is universal.
Again, everything in nature is in perfect balance. The gravity and motion of every sun, star, planet, and comet, is calculated and proportioned to maintain the equilibrium of the universe. This universal law controls the movements of every atom, every drop of water, and every breath of air. It is also true in its application to electricity. Electricity is so tenacious of a perfect equipoise, that disturb its equili- brium and it dances in sparks, and burns in the lightning’s flash from one end of the heaven to the other. Electro- dynamics, and Electro-statics, abound in illustrations. If electricity is universal, the disturbance of its equilibrium in any part of the universe, affects its equilibrium, more or less, throughout the whole ; and as it is constantly at work forming compounds its anti-equilibrium state must necessarily work peculiarities in the nature of the compound, corre sponding to the nature of the disturbance.
We discover that our fingers, hands, arms, limbs, and feet, can be put in motion in obedience to the will. Why ? Distributed in the substance of nearly every tissue of the body, are almost numberless fine and filiform organs, pro- ceeding from the brain and spinal marrow, called nerves. These nerves are of the same substance as the encephalon or brain, and are excellent conductors of electricity. The brain is a galvanic battery, and the mind is the electrician or galvanologist. The mind wills the movement of an arm, the brain is instantly charged with electricity, and the electric currents flash along the nerves leading from the brain to the muscles of the arm, the muscles under their influence imme- diately contract, the arm is moved, and the will is obeyed. Every volition and thought conceived in the mind implies the action of the brain. Simultaneously with the action, in proportion with the intensity and character of the action, electric currents flash upon the nervous system and change the electrical condition of the body.
The change in the electrical condition of man’s body changes the electrical condition of other bodies, and then still others, affecting the electrical equilibrium of the universe, conveying in the peculiarity of the disturbance your thoughts and volitions throughout immensity. And as electricity is the formative power in compounding simples, and in the crystallization of substances, it inworks your, very thoughts and volitions into the rocks of other worlds, or pencils them with a diamond pen upon the symmetric angles and pellucid points of the crystals of all spheres, in and throughout the vast system of universal being. The Omniscient God who can discover the position of every atom, and the reason of the position, need but glance upon the rocky records and crystal archives of the universe to be acqlainted with all our thoughts.
Whether a man’s words, acts, and thoughts are immortalized this way or not, the second proposition laid down for elaboration and illustration is true : Sin will find the sinner out by the exposure of the especial principle and act of sin of which the sinner is guilty. There is a Great Day at the end of man’s probation as a race, in which every especial principle and act of sin will be made manifest. The fact of the manifestation is a truth of revelation ; the manner we do not know. Every sin may leave its appropriate and peculiar bias upon the sinner’s character, and it may be exposed in that day by the simple unmasking of his character.
Or, every sin, in virtue of man’s connection with the system of God as an integral part of the system, and as such entering into the unity of the system, may have its peculiar and appropriate bias upon the system in some way, and therefore may be exposed in the day of Judgment by an exhibition of that system, as truly as any wound in man’s body may be exposed years afterwards by the remaining cicatrix. Or, that God, who never forgets, may announce the sins of the sinner, one by one, in the hearing of an assembled universe, the sinner standing in the meanwhile and blushing with shame in the full view of every eye. Or, the sinner himself, whose own memory quickened by the circumstances of the Judgment, and therefore retaining in wonderful vividness and truth every sin of which he is guilty, urged on by the blistering lash of a fired conscience, may confess them, every one, God and angels, demons and devils, saints and sinners, all hearing.
And the righteous themselves may not escape such a pub- lication. It may be necessary to magnify the grace of God in the salvation of the righteous, to show forth the worth of the Saviour received by some and rejected by others, to exhibit the effectiveness of the plan of salvation to save all, and if any are lost it is their own fault, to justify Himself in the minds of all intelligent beings in saving some and damning others, and to make such an exhibition of the entire administration of His government affecting man that all may glorify Him in the recognition both of His mercy and Justice, that every sin of every good man though forgiven should be exposed. Man’s relations to every other man, and to demons and angels too, may make this necessary. What an awful significance is imparted to the text in the universality of its application : ” Be sure your sin will find you out ! “
Sin will find the sinner out. By the exposure of the sin- ner so that he will be recognized in his character as a sinner, whenever brought in contact with understanding beings— this was the first proposition. By the exposure of the especial principle and act of sin of which the sinner is guilty, was the second ; now :
III. Sin will find the sinner out by the i?ifliction of its penalty. — The penalty of sin is death. This penalty is single, having reference only to the soul, and has not that trinal form theologians give it, and which they express by the phrases, Spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death. Spiritual death, or death of the soul, is the penalty of sin ; physical death is but a consequence of the penalty; eternal death is but the continuation of the penalty beyond pro- bation, aggravated by the appalling circumstances of the sinner’s future.
Man’s capacity for spiritual life is a trinity in unity : intellect, sensibilities, and conduct. Spiritual life is also a trinity in unity, having a principle, an essence, and a development. Its principle is faith in God ; its essence is love to God ; its development is obedience to God. The trinity in unity in spiritual life corresponds with man’s capacity for spiritual life. When man is spiritually alive, faith in God, the principle of spiritual life, is in his intellect ; love to God, the essence of spiritual life, is in his sensibilities ; obedience to God, the development of spiritual life, is in his conduct. Such a man is said in scriptural language to have God’s image, and the terms used by Paul as descriptive of God’s image, when ex- amined scripturally and philologically, correspond exactly with the elements of spiritual life given at this hour with their respective agreement with the threefold capacity of man for spiritual life.
Now sin is also a trinity in unity. It has a principle, essence, and development. Its principle is unbelief, its essence is enmity to God, its development is disobedience to God. Its trinal character is distinctly revealed in the sin of the woman in the beginning. When sin enters the soul its principle, unbelief, takes the place of faith in God, the principle of spiritual life, in the intellect ; its essence, enmity to God, takes the place of love to God, the essence of spiritual life, in the sensibilities ; and its development, disobedience to God, takes the place of Obedience to God, the development of spiritual life, in the conduct — and the man is dead.
Sin, this Cerberus, this three-headed dog of hell, has broken out of his Stygian kennel, and his infernal yelpings have driven in some instances everything in the shape of virtue to the dens of the mountains. But a plenipotent Evangel is on his track with burning whip, and 1 humbly pray God that He may lash him to the ends of the world, and there seizing him by his accursed throat, lift him writhing into midair, and fling him with awful momentum into the nethermost hell, to bay Eternal Darkness in Eternal Darkness’ s own dread dungeons, and howl the everlasting bass in hell’s uproar, while eternal ages travel on in their never ending march.
The principle, essence, and development of sin, as also the principle, essence, and development of spiritual life, are genera — yes, causative genera — under which all that enters into the composition of the sum total of moral char- acter group themselves. And whatever is sin produces spiritual death, and it does it simultaneously with the ap- propriation of the sin in the sense of ownership upon the part of the creature, and by the creature’s incurrence of guilt. Death is the necessary penalty of sin. and is as in- separably connected with it as effect is to cause. Indeed, death is but the result of the philosophic action of sin upon the human character necessitated from the very philosophy of sin’s constitution. Wherever you find a sinner, you find a dead soul. There is a difference between life and existence, therefore there is a difference between death and annihilation. The soul consciously exists, yet is dead. If whenever you find a sinner, you find a dead soul, the converse is true ; whenever you find a dead soul, you find a sinner.
Spiritual death itself, independent of any symptomatic effects of sin upon the character, presents an appropriate diagnosis by which it is cognizable. Is the sinner unhappy ? This is an element in the diagnosis, by which we know the soul is dead ; his sin has found him out in the infliction of its penalty. Is there a horrid vacuum within? Is his con- stitution abnormal ? Does his conscience lash him ? Is he separated from God ? Has he lost his subjective and ob- jective harmony ? Do passions, abominations, and demons riot like vermin in the rottenness of his dead soul ? His sin has found him out in the infliction of its penalty ; and ” the wages of sin is death,” and when “sin is finished it bringeth forth death.”
Sin is a serpent whose bite infuses a virus into the moral constitution which produces horrid death. You all remember the fabulous monster, the Hydra, which dwelt in the lake or marsh of Lerna, in Peloponnesus, which had a multitude of heads, which spread terror and destruction through the land. It was assaulted many times, yet was not con quered, for as quickly as one head was severed, anothei would immediately succeed it unless the wound was cauter- ized. Hercules finally killed the monstrous serpent by applying firebrands to the wounded necks as he cut off the heads. Sin is a serpent of more fearful power and form ; and though it may wear at times an epidermis of glittering beauty, it is a serpent still— a serpent of many a horrid fold and snaky coil. Its heads are multiplied so there is a crowned head with poisonous fangs, and flashing eyes, and forked tongue, and deadly breath, for every land. Its huge form bathes in every sea, and its heads protrude on every shore.
Often has he been attacked by sainted philanthropists of earth, and as often have they failed, for when their glittering sabres descended and a head bit the dust — marvellous power of reproduction! — another, with twofold fury, reared its dreadful crest, and bid defiance to all human effort. Such a monster is at our very feet, his scaly trunk upreared, and his writhing necks and hissing heads are oscillating and striking all around us, and bleeding at every pore, the insinuating poison of death coursing every vein of the body and searing every fibre of the soul, we are dying, dying — and the host of the dead is a ghastly evidence of the truth of the text : ” Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Yet this monstrous beast is loved, fed, fostered, and wor- shipped throughout the world. Men are sinners ; they sin wilfully, they sin systematically, they sin professionally, they sin individually, they sin socially, they sin nationally ; till every stream that flows is stained with human crimes, and every breeze that blows is corrupted with a moral miasma, and every arrow of light flung by the god of day from his golden quiver is blackened. Scarcely an angel dare touch this cursed earth in his flight from sphere to sphere without pollution.
The Judgments of the Almighty from age to age, and the machinery of the world’s civilization in full motion from Adam till now, have not abolished sin out of any one country upon the face of the earth. Prayers, sermons, books, insti- tutions, laws, penalties, governments, all combined, have not blotted out one vice from sin’s black calendar. The life, miracles, sufferings, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and teachings of Christ; the examples, works, importunities, deaths, and triumphs of His followers ; the confessions and warnings of millions who have died testifying to their ever- lasting condemnation ; the strivings of the Holy Spirit; the curses of the law ; the promises of the Gospel ; the horrors of hell, and the beauties of heaven — all these have not driven sin out of one neighborhood in the world.
Sin is an immense river running through secret channels from hell’s seething ocean, till it broke out upon this world in the garden of Eden. There at the footltef the tree of knowl- edge of good and evil is its source — a noisy spring bubbling with the escape of baneful gases, in whose tenebrious depths a serpent lives. Ever enlarging, this river flows all round the world. Onward it sweeps. Upon its banks no flowers grow, no foliage waves, but perpetual desolation pitches its pavilions upon the sterile strand, relieved here and there by bald and scoriae rocks, upon which weeping spirits sit and curse the day that they were born. In all the universe there is no river so wide, so deep, so swift as this. Its floods are black, its waves are towering, and it goes surging and roaring on to the bottomless lake, everlasting lightnings pencilling every billowy crest with angry fire, and Hell’s terrific thunders bounding from bank to bank and bursting with awful crash and strewing dread ruin all around.
Surely such a river might roll on forever unvisited by mortal man. But, oh, alas ! climax of all wonders ! quin- tessence of all marvels ! its shores are lined from source to mouth with human wretches. They crowd to gain its edges, all sexes, all conditions, all classes. The mother decks hei daughter’s brow, and side by side they leap into the boister- ous flood. Into its boiling current the young maiden runs laughing, and passes from sight in a moment ; the old man following, his hoary locks streaming in the wind like the shredded canvas of a storm-ridden ship reeling upon the foamy summit of a stupendous wave that washes heaven, but to be hurled the next moment by the driving blast into the raging vortex below, and be swallowed up forever. Between every human being and this fearful river there is a bleeding body and a bloody cross, and angels posited on. every height and hovering over every head and shouting ” Stop ” — ” in the name of God, pause but for a moment,” — but disregarding the angelic warning and trampling upon both body and cross, with gory feet they spring far out into the murky tide, and join their fellows, till every wave is freighted and instinct with human souls, and all together carried onward and in one eternal roar poured over the boundaries of human probation into Acheron’s fiery sea, forced downward by the plunging floods to perdition’s deepest dungeons, to rise far out from shore upon flaming waves unquenchable to scream forever with unmitigated and cease- less woe.
Rivers never run more truly to the ocean, than the river of sin. runs to hell, and there at last, if never before, sin will find the sinner out by the infliction of its ultimate penalty — Eternal Death ! Two more dreadful words were never joined together — Eternal — Death. Each term rendered in- expressibly awful by the associated meaning of the other. It is the death of the soul eternized. It is separation from God, the source of life, forever. It is separation front virtue and happiness, forever. It is separation from heaven, angels, and sainted ones, forever. It is separation from all that is beautiful, and good, forever. It is separation from all in- tellectual, social, and moral pursuits, which seem to accord with man’s nature and destiny as an immortal being, and as the offspring of God, and it is separation forever. It is companionship with Satan, demons, and the damned, in hell, forever. It is bitter memories, tormenting remorse, and agonizing despair, forever. It is to be wicked without the hope or power of repentance, to be miserable without miti- gation, to be both, forever. It is the utter subversion and destruction of the unity and harmony of man’s nature, and the total failure of his life in the accomplishment of any- thing worthy of him, and both, forever. It is the aggregation of all sorrows, pains, woes, and horrors, mixed in one fearful beverage to be drunken, forever. It is to be lost in hell or lost in outer darkness beyond the circle of universal being, forever. Oh, that we could get rid of that little word, with a significance as high, wide, and deep as God, that little word, forever. My hearers, it is Death, and Death forevei — Eternal Death.