time, slip out of sight; they pass behind each other. Sins rise upon one another, and become foreshortened, so as to hide all but the last of the whole chain. A lesser sin which is nearer will hide ten greater if they be farther off; a thousand will lie hid behind one. The whole retrospect of a life becomes narrowed and shut up into the recollection of a few months or days. All that is past goes for nothing; it is as if it did not exist. Good were it if it were really so before God; if our forgetfulness could blot the book of His remembrance; if what we cease to remember were forgotten before the Judge of quick and dead.

Now, of all such as these St. Paul says that their sins "follow after." Let us see what this

means.

1. It means, that all sins have their proper chastisement; which, however long delayed and seemingly averted, will, as a general law, sooner or later, overtake the sinner.

I say all sins, because chastisement follows often even upon sins that are repented of, as in the case of David; and I say also as a general law, because it seems sometimes that God, in His tender compassion to individual cases, does hold back the chastisement of His rod, and by ways of peculiar lovingkindness make perfect the humiliation of particular penitents. It is certain that

there are such exceptions. No doubt they have their portion of the cross in other and inscrutable ways, which make the scales weigh even. In them the cross does the work of the rod.

Nevertheless, these exceptions no more break the general rule, than the translation of Enoch and Elijah repeals the sentence of death on sin. Our sins follow us by the rod of chastisement. As the sins of the fathers upon the children, so the sins of childhood on youth, and youth on after years. How little did we know what we were laying up for ourselves. How little did we think at that day, in the hour of our transgression: This will find me out when I am in middle life, or in my old age: though it tarry never so long, it will come at last. And how few, when they are visited, lay it to heart, and say: This sorrow or this sickness is the just chastisement following upon the sins of my life past. These are the scourges of God, which have followed me afar off, and now have overtaken me. "Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the sins of my youth."

2. Again, past sins follow after sinners in the active power by which they still keep a hold on their present state of heart.

It is one of the worst effects of sin, that, after

1 Job xiii. 26.

commission, it clings to the soul. Every sin leaves some deposit in the spiritual nature. It quickens the original root of evil; it multiplies and unfolds its manifold corruption. And worst of all, it brings on a deadness and an insensibility of the spiritual nature. The most dangerous part of sin is its deceitfulness. Sin can hide itself from the conscience. It is most concealed at its highest pitch of strength. When at the worst, it is least perceived. Deadly sins, like mortifying wounds, have little sensible pain. The cause of most besetting sins, and of most sinful inclinations in after life is the indulgence of particular sins in youth or childhood. Pride, vanity, selfishness, contempt, wrath, envy, scornfulness, and other baser sins, are the consequences, or the following of early transgressions. They follow us in their moral deterioration. It is so also with the coldness, insensibility, indevotion, of which people complain. Some sin unrepented or forgotten, and because forgotten, therefore unrepented, lies festering in the dark; and the whole character suffers in all its parts and powers. It is this that obstructs the whole spiritual life; thrusts itself between the soul and the presence of God; bars up the avenues of grace; turns the bread of life into a stone; makes the true vine seem to be a dead branch; and the communion of Christ's saints to be cold

and desolate. It is cold to us, and we think it cold in itself. Fire has no heat to the dead. Christ did no mighty works among the unbelieving. Our early sins of wilfulness, irreverence, self-worship, have followed us. As shadows they fall upon our path, and darken our hearts, though the light about us "be sevenfold as the light of seven days." Temptations cast us down, because within us they have somewhat that is in secret league with them. The world overawes us, because, in times past, we have wondered after it and worshipped it. Our present falls, infirmities, spiritual struggles, afflictions, and dangerous inclinations, are for the most part the sins of our past life, following us in chastisement, and cleaving as diseases and temptations.

out."

3. And further, whether or no sins follow in chastisement now, they will surely overtake us in the judgment. "Be sure your sin will find you This is the inflexible destiny of sinners. Secret as they may be in this life, all shall be laid open before men and angels in the great account. Hidden things shall come forth to confound the hypocrite, despised sins to condemn the impenitent. The long quest of sin pursuing the guilty shall be ended before the great white throne. All masks shall be torn off from all faces there; and we shall be seen not as we shew ourselves, but as we are.

1 Numbers xxxii. 23.

It will be a fearful meeting between a sinner and his very self; when his true self shall confront his false; and the multitude of his sins shall clamour on every side. Such must one day be the doom of the most successful hypocrite, of the fairest and least-suspected sinner.

So likewise with the self-ignorant, neglectful, self-deceiving. Sins they have so forgotten as never truly to repent of, shall be then gathered in array. This is the chief danger of spiritual sloth. Slothful Christians never really grapple with their sins. They take refuge in the generalities of confession, and in set forms of prayer. All their faults may be softened, but no one temper is really mortified. The moral deterioration of past sin they acquiesce in as inevitable, and believe to be beyond all cure in this life, trusting that God will somehow cleanse them. Their whole inward being is entangled and clouded; no convictions are fully formed, no truths fully recognised; they are neither cold nor hot, neither holy nor unholy, penitent nor impenitent; but in that fearful middle state for which judgment and eternity have no middle doom.

Who can say what is the burden of sin which rests upon the forgetful, negligent, complacent, unexamined, unsifted soul? What a crowd of forgotten sins shall follow the unconscious Christian