self. Parable apart, my ill-willed brethren, our ill-will
has made us very fiends in human shape. What a fall, what a fate, what a
curse it is to be possessed of a devil of ill-will! Who can put proper
words on it after Paul had to confess himself silent before it? Who can
utter the diabolical nature, the depth and the secrecy, the subtlety and
the spirituality, the range and the reach-out of an ill-will? Our hearts
are full of ill-will at those we meet and shake hands with every day. At
men also we have never seen, and who are totally ignorant even of our
existence. Over a thousand miles we dart our viperous hearts at innocent
men. At great statesmen we have ill-will, and at small; at great
churchmen and at small; at great authors and at small; at great, and
famous, and successful men in all lines of life; for it is enough for ill-
will that another man be praised, and well-paid, and prosperous, and then
placed in our eye. No amount of suffering will satiate ill-will; the
very grave has no seal against it. And, now and then, you have it thrust
upon you that other men have the same devil in them as deeply and as
actively as he is in you. You will suddenly run across a man on the
street. His face was shining with some praise he had just had spoken to
him, or with some recognition he had just received from some great one;
or with some good news for himself he had just heard, before he caught
sight of you. But the light suddenly dies on his face, and darkness
comes up out of his heart at his sudden glimpse of you. What is the
matter? you ask yourself as he scowls past you. What have you done so to
darken any man's heart to you? And as you stumble on in the sickening
cloud he has left behind him, you suddenly recollect that you were once
compelled to vote against that man on a public question: on some question
of home franchise, or foreign war, or church government, or city
business; or perchance, a family has left his shop to do business in
yours, or his church to worship God in yours, or such like. It will be a
certain relief to you to recollect such things. But with it all there
will be a shame and a humiliation and a deep inward pain that will escape
into a cry of prayer for him and for yourself and for all such sinners on
the same street. If you do not find an escape from your sharp resentment
in ejaculatory prayer and in a heart-cleansing great good-will, your
heart, before you are a hundred steps on,