society and in the business world, but whose sin is great and whose
heart is vile beyond description. I speak of drinking because it is
the most common of sins.

John B. Gough cries out concerning this sin, "I do not speak of it
boastingly," said he, "for I have known what the curse of strong drink
is; I have felt it in my own life and seen it in others, but I say the
truth, let the bread of affliction be given me to eat, take away from
me the friends of my old age, let the hut of poverty be my dwelling
place, let the wasting hand of disease be placed upon me, let me live
in the whirlwind and dwell in the storm, when I would do good let evil
come upon me--do all this, merciful God, but save me from the death of
a drunkard." When he would speak in such language, God pity the man
who yields to such a sin.

It may be that gambling is your weak point. When I was in Colorado a
young man who was a graduate of Harvard, the honor man of his class,
and who had recently buried his wife, sat at the gambling table, staked
his last dollar and lost it; then deliberately put up his little child
and lost her; and then, in despair, blew out his brains and sent his
soul to hell. When such a man of culture and training would go down
under such a sin, God pity the man who yields to it.

Or it may be licentiousness, that sin which makes men lower than the
beasts of the field, from which one can scarcely break away. I do not
know what the sin may be that clutches your life, but if you have given
way to it and rejected Christ, how wilt thou do in the swelling of
Jordan, when the waters rise higher and higher and you are without
Christ and without hope?

II

Some are in the cave of infidelity. That there are honest skeptics in
the world we all believe, and the honest skeptic is one who says, "I
cannot believe as you do, and I do not know that I would if I could,
but if your hope is any comfort to you, then cling to it and go down to
your grave trusting in it."

The dishonest skeptic is the man who sneers at my faith, who laughs at
the old-fashioned religion, who says that once he believed in it but
has grown away from it, seemingly forgetting that the greatest men the
country has ever produced have been humble followers of Jesus of
Nazareth. Infidelity does not satisfy. It leaves an aching void in
life and mocks us in death. Besides, it is deceiving and the talk of
the infidel orator is deceiving. Said one of the most eloque