SIN. A Convict Soul. Oh, sight of pity, shame and dole ! WALT WHITMAN. Sin Unchecked. Sin runs to passion; passion to tumult in character; and a tumultuous character tends to tempests and explosions, which scorn secrecies and disguises. Thus the whole man comes to light. He sees bimself, and others see him, as he is in God's light. Those solemn imperatives and their awful responses: “Thou shalt not”—“I will"; "Thou shalt"-"I will not" make up, that the man knows of intercourse with God. Sin, in the ultimate and finished type of it. what it grows to in every sinner, if unchecked by the grace of God. Every man unredeemed becomes a demon in eternity.-AUSTIN PHELPS. Redemption by Suffering. then, all This is This is Forgiveness of sins, if it merely means remission of penalty, perhaps might be achieved without a sacrifice. But if forgiveness of sins means really delivering another from his sin, that never can be accomplished without pain. When the Nation has given itself over to believe a lie to write liberty on its banners and slavery on human lives-death is inevitable if there be not found men and women who are willing to pour out their lives that they may preserve it from death and redeem it from sin. When the Church is threatened with apostasy, endangered, corrupted and degraded, there is no hope for it through painless preaching. It lives only as there are men who are willing to pcur their lives out into the Church and for the Church. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. No redemption is possible without suffering. The Superintendent of the Inebriate Asylum at Binghamton, New York, bore testimony to this truth when he said: "Some men are sent here under compulsion-almost driven here by their friends— and no such man is ever cured. No man has ever gone from this asylum cured of his inebriacy unless there was some one-a wife, a mother, a maiden, a sister-who prayed for him, hoped for him and wept for him at home." The great redemptive power in life is the power of a suffering heart. No Church can be lifted up into a higher plane except by a prophet who feels in his soul the pain, shame and humiliation of all that is false and evil in the Church. No child was ever saved by an unsuffering mother; no nation by unsuffering patriots; no church by an unsuffering pastor; and—we say it reverently the world could not be saved by an unsuffering God. He might take off the penalty; He might let us off; but He can not pour His own life into us, so as to make us in very truth sons of God, unless He pours Himself into us through a wounded, riven and broken heart. The angel who redeems Peter must go into the prison, that he may lead Peter out. The crucifixion was It was not not an accident, an incident, an occasion. something artificial, wrought by God for an artificial end. It was, in the very nature of the case, that the race could not be saved by a Redeemer who did not go down into the race, share its experiences, know its life, feel pressed by the burden of its degradation.--LYMAN AB BOTT. The Awfulness of Sin. The awfulness of sin comes not wholly from the fact that it is a disobedience of God, but as well from the certainty that it is a doing of violence to the soul itself in the loss of power, the decay of love, the enfeebling of will and the general atrophy of the nature. The thing effected by our indulgence is not alone the book of final judgment, but the present fabric of the spirit.HENRY DRUMMOND. SLANDER. Advice About Slander. Your blameless life will be your best defense, and those who have seen it will not allow you to be condemned so readily as your slanderers expect. Only abstain from fighting your own battles, and in nine cases out of ten your accusers will gain nothing by their malevolence but chagrin for themselves and contempt from others. Το prosecute the slanderer is very seldom wise.-SPURGEON. A Deadly Sin. Jesus calls a slanderous spirit a beam, compared with which any other mistake is a little, thin splinter. Here is a man who condemns every poor creature who is overtaken in a fault. He has no sympathy with such. The man took a glass of whisky too much, lost his equilibrium, was seen in a reeling state. That circumstance is reported to the man who only indulges in slanderous criticism, and the man immediately calls for the excommunication of the erring brother from the church, not knowing that he himself is drunk, but not with winedrunk with a hostile spirit-drunk with uncharitableness. If I had been guilty of this ineffable meanness, I would preach to myself as loudly and keenly as to any other man—if I had been guilty of speaking an unkind word about any human creature or suspecting the honesty of any man. If ever I have said about a brother minister: "He is a fine man in many respects, a noble creature— kind, chivalrous, grand of soul-but "; if ever I have said that "but," God will punish me for it. We do not lay hold of this great truth sufficiently. We think that a little slander is of no consequence. To be called up before a church and condemned for slander! Condemn the drunkard, turn out the man who by infinite pressure has committed some sin-turn him out, certainly, and never go after him, and never care what may become of him. Let a wolf gnaw him; only get rid of him. If we go home and speak unkindly of man, woman or child, who is the great sinner-the drunkard whom we have just expelled or the closely shaven and highly pol ished Christian who does nothing but filch his neighbor's good name?-JOSEPH PARKER. Character and Activity of Slander. 'Tis slander Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue SHAKESPEARE. Indifference a Shield. Am I persecuted by evil men's tongues? Let them wag. The serpents vibrate their tongues in the wilderness, but they do not trouble any one who is not in the wilderness. Stand aloof from all these misconceptions of men. Stand higher.-BEECHER. · |