e one the working of life, in the other
the working of death. The one is formed and fashioned by the loving
hands and quickening breath of God; the other is gradually and surely
rotting away by the eating leprosy of sin. For the former the end is
eternal life; for the latter, the second death.

And the truth that underlies that awful representation is the familiar
one to which I have already referred in another connection, that, by the
very laws of our nature, by the plain necessities of the case, all our
moral qualities, be they good or bad, tend to increase by exercise. In
whatever direction we move, the rate of progress tends to accelerate
itself. And this is preeminently the case when the motion is downwards.
Every day that a bad man lives he is a worse man. My friend! you are on
a sloping descent. Imperceptibly--because you will not look at the
landmarks--but really, and not so very slowly either; convictions are
dying out, impulses to good are becoming feeble, habits of neglect of
conscience are becoming fixed, special forms of sin--avarice, or pride,
or lust--are striking their claws deeper into your soul, and holding
their bleeding booty firmer. In all regions of life exercise strengthens
capacity. The wrestler, according to the old Greek parable, who began by
carrying a calf on his shoulders, got to carry an ox by and by.

It is a solemn thought this of the steady continuous aggravation of sin
in the individual character. Surely nothing can be small which goes to
make up that rapidly growing total. Beware of the little beginnings
which 'eat as doth a canker.' Beware of the slightest deflection from
the straight line of right. If there be two lines, one straight and the
other going off at the sharpest angle, you have only to produce both far
enough, and there will be room between them for all the space that
separates hell from heaven! Beware of lading your souls with the weight
of small single sins. We heap upon ourselves, by slow, steady accretion
through a lifetime, the weight that, though it is gathered by grains,
crushes the soul. There is nothing heavier than sand. You may lift it by
particles. It drifts in atoms, but heaped upon a man it will break his
bones, and blown over the land it buries pyramid and sphynx, the temples
of gods and the homes of men beneath its barren solid waves. The leprosy
gnaws the flesh off a man's bones, and joints and limbs drop off--he is
a living death. So with every soul that