ignorance of his own wretchedness and need. Ah! brethren, I do not need
to exaggerate, nor to talk about 'splendid vices,' in the untrue
language of one of the old saints, but this I seek to press on you: that
the deep, universal sin does not lie in the indulgence of passions, or
the breach of moralities, but it lies here--'thou hast left Me, the
fountain of living water.' That is what I charge on myself, and on every
one of you, and I beseech you to recognise the existence of this
sinfulness beneath all the surface of reputable and pure lives.
Beautiful they may be; God forbid that I should deny it: beautiful with
many a strenuous effort after goodness, and charming in many respects,
but yet vitiated by this, 'The God in whose hand thy breath is, and
whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified.' That is enough to make
a man brush away all the respectabilities and proprieties and graces,
and look at the black reality beneath, and wail out 'of whom I am
chief.'

But, further, Paul's condensed summary of the Gospel implies the fatal
character of this universal sin. 'He comes to save,' says he. Now what
answers to 'save' is either disease or danger. The word is employed in
the original in antithesis to both conditions. To save is to heal and to
make safe. And I need not remind you, I suppose, of how truly the
alienation from God, and the substitution for Him of self or of
creature, is the sickness of the whole man. But the end of sickness
uncured is death. We 'have no healing medicine,' and the 'wound is
incurable' by the skill of any earthly chirurgeon. The notion of
sickness passes, therefore, at once into that of danger: for unhealed
sickness can only end in death. Oh! that my words could have the waking
power that would startle some of my complacent hearers into the
recognition of the bare facts of their lives and character, and of the
position in which they stand on a slippery inclined plane that goes
straight down into darkness!

You do not hear much about the danger of sin from some modern pulpits.
God forbid that it should be the staple of any; but God forbid that it
should be excluded from any! Whilst fear is a low motive,
self-preservation is not a low one; and it is to that that I now appeal.
Brethren, the danger of every sin is, first, its rapid growth; second,
its power of separating from God; third, the certainty of a future--ay!
and _present_--retribution.

To me, the proof of the fatal effect of si