The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-02-10
" Re Sure Your Sin Will Find You
Out"
Extract from a recent sermon by Rev. Robert
Tnilrrf Of Cbicaro


SIX Is not like the poison which wrenches
! your soul out and leaves you black and
loathsome while the vial is still in your
hand, it Is like the poison we hear of among
| the peasants of Southern Germany, which,
| when they begin to take it al first in minute
! quantities, gives the eye new luster the
! check new bloom, and seems to impart
! power and life which is almost magical.
/ But You cannot stay your hand at the grain
day. The nature demands more and morei
! the hand loses its cunning rs the brain loses
| its balance, the luster fades out of the eyes,
| and the bloom out of the cheek, and then
| there comes a day when all is over. Now if
| that day could come at first instead of at
last there would be a stop at once to the
! subtle and dangerous practice; but the be
| ginning is just the pleasant thing in life.
| 1t is like your first grain of opium, your first
| dram, when dram to you is like oil to a
seething and spreading fire, or the first bit
of cunning knavcry when you overreach
simpler nature trading jack-knives. You do
not think there can be any harm in that; and
then if there is, the pleasure is instant while
the penalty is very remote, and in the way
you have been trained to think, perhaps
there are two chances that you will not be
run down, found out and brought to bay to
one that you will. That is the inner secret
of the life of every rogue who has had good
fair chance in his birth and breeding in his
education, and in the social safeguards God
throws about our life of being an honest
man.
That is the secret Of these men in the gut
ter who might have commanded universal
esteem, or the secret why their children are
in the gutter if they escape. The egg must
have its time to hatch and turn the heart OF
the fruit TO nest of evil things, whose sole
purpose is to eat their way outward and
leave what they lived on a mass of corrup-
ton. That is the slight detection that may
work itself out in a century and land my
great grandchild a drifted wreck on the
shores of time, as the ship that is not
/ brought up true may run on line as wide
as a quarter of the world to strike Il reef and
go down with all her crew. Its this subtle,
slow-working poison we cannot see at work
which hides itself under the guisc of bene-
diction on those who take it, and manages to
break the connection in the mind between
the first grain, taken years before, and that
over-mcasurc which sweeps its victim out of
life. But there all The time is the conncc-
ton. It is like that gibbet law we had in
my country in one district 200 years ago,
when if a man stole hOrSe-and we were
great hands in those days at that-the beast
itself was yoked to a rope on whiclst the
ak hung, and then run out swiftly to thet turn
of the wheel, and the man was no more.
Nov = hi nil
the eye of this truth of the penalty every
where and always in my text.
lie will have nothing to do with the doc
trine Of standing from under, or creeping
out and escaping the pain when we have
had the pleasure. And so he draws this
conclusion, that we may make it all right
with those who are our companions in sin
so that they shall never reveal the secret
while the world stands, or we may keep our
sin to ourselves so that no human being
shall ever suspect us, or we may think we
have made 1t all right with Heaven, or can
make it all right before We get through, or
that somehow or other the connection may
break between the seed time and the harvest,
So that where we sowcd corruption We shall
reap some eternal good-he goes back of all
this TO the original verify, and says: " Be
sure your sin will find you out" We may
not fear our God or our fcllow-man when we
take hold of a red-hot bar of iron, but there
is still something We shall fear, do fear, and
must fear, and that is the way the ire will
find Us out and this, in a figure, Is exactly
what the prophet means. The long lapse is
not the question; the root and heart of the
matter is, that right in the sin itself lies the
pledge of the penalty. 1t is no cXtrinsic
matter; no, not even toward Heaven and the
Al-sceug Eye and the stroke of rctri-
button. The eye and the stroke is right
there in the thing we do which transgrcsscs
any law of life or of the soul. This other
self may seem to enter into the faction and
say we will make II all right somehow be-
fore We get through, but this other self lies;
that smile on his face is the Ieer of lost
soul. 1t is mask the father Of lies puts on
to masquerade through this new time. He
could not take Us with the old bait any
more than could take specklcd trout with
the plunge of crowbar. He cannot come
with the parchment and the lancet. These
things belong to the dark ages. We have
got over all these afTrights. We know what
"
about until we know this, that, more awful
than the fear of the eternal white holiness Of
heaven or the lurid flames Of the pit or pub
lie shame, among our ncighbOrs, or at our
own fircsidc, we shall fear this intrinsic and
unmanageablc and unbribablc power of pun
ishmcnt which lies in the heart Of the wrong
we deliberately do. There is where the real
gist of the matter lies. My sin will find me
out. may nurse the thought that | can
manage every other judge and jury and Jail
er, l cannot manage my own sin. Just so
long it will be, if did but know it, and then
the payment TO the last iot-no escape from
that. No hope Of escape until | have paid
the price, and taken refuge in the Eternal pity
for new start, and braced my heart on
the Eternal strength, so that of all things in
the universe | shall hate and loathe this
A good friend told me lately that when he
was small boy he was sent to buy mi
croscopc, on Broadway. Theywere of some
very simple sort, single and double, and the
man gave him box to pick from He man.
aged to get double one, while the merchant
thought he had sold a single one, and went
his way. But the sin went with him; he
could not sleep, and suffered rcmOrSe and
fear beyond telling in his poor boy-hcart,
and, when the pain got to be quite uncndur-
able, next day, he took the glass back, cx-
planned as well as he could the mistake he
had made, got the matter rightcd, and so it
ended, except for the lesson he got that the
most terrible of all the policemen who walk
Broadway is your own sin, the shame of it,
and the fear and the pain. The man is him
self a merchant of q spotless name. won
through many years Of life in our own town.
Had he not attended to that first point of
detection and brought himself round, only
the great God who watches us all know.
what he might have been to-day. Of all the
mcrcies that ever fell on his heart that great
pain and shame was perhaps the greatest.
Of all the good angels that have gone with
him through life, none ever was more true
to him than that angel of a right resolution
which set his face TO the right as his sin was
scourging him. He might have driven the
thing inward and covered it over, and /
chuckled over the way he had got bargain |
out of the old man. 1t would have been, to I
all human insight, the insects egg in the |
young apple, and his fair, sound autumn
would have been tainted to the core.
For this is the sad thing about our sin, /
when We insist on it and persevere in it, !
even if at last We do really repent us, that
we have lost the faculty life should bring to (
us all of being true and good. Ihave a book |
IN my library Of very remarkable quality, /
the confessions of man who fell into great
sin, which uncentered his very soul. He re-
pented of that sin bitterly and got over it,
but he never got over what it had brought