If by a meaning smile, if by a passing allusion, if in mere inuendo, you betray to another your consciousness that he is doing wrong, and do not at the same time make him see your disapproval of the wrong—if need be, your hatred of the wrong, your horror of the wrong, your indignation at the wrong,-your determination, if need be, to expose and put down the wrong-then (be not deceived) you consent to the wrong. For this, if it be not treason, is the scarcely less heinous crime of misprison of treason, against God. You almost become a participator in his wrong doing. Rather abstain from every appearance of evil; rather put away from among yourselves that wicked person: at least, let your language to all be unmistakable in its clearness; at least remember that "By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

II. I have spoken of the sin, let me now say a few words about its cause. It is due, my brethren, to a fading appreciation of moral evil; a tampering with it, a destruction of that healthy instinct which revolts at it. It is the very nature of sin, that the more we know of it, the less we know it; the more we are familiar with it, the less do we understand its vileness.

says the poet,

"Oh! he was innocent,"

"And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom."

With what marvellous power is this truth indicated in one of the oldest fragments of the world's history, the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. Our first parents are innocent, and therefore they are noble, they are happy, they hear the Call of God as they sit under the palms of Paradise. But, alas! Eve lingers near the

forbidden tree, and near the forbidden tree lurks ever the Serpent-tempter; and then, step by step, little by little, not shocking the soul at once, but alluring it imperceptibly, comes first the subtle insinuation of the doubt, "Yea, hath God said?" then the bold scepticism, "Thou shalt not surely die," and then the guilty admiration of "the fruit pleasant to the eyes," and then the guilty longing for it as "a fruit to be desired to make one wise," and then the guilt itself—the guilty stretching forth of the disobedient hand, the guilty plucking of the fruit; and then very rapidly the worst, last, most odious, least pardonable consequence, the tempting of others to the same sin; and then the sin is over. Yes, the sin is over, but not the issues of it; not the horrible glare of inward illumination; the opening of the eyes; the agony of guilty shame; the Awful Voice; the vain hiding from detection; the conscious nakedness; the feeble, lying excuses, and trying to throw the blame on others; the lost Eden; the pain, the toil, the sorrow; the memory of life reduced to a bitter sigh; the melancholy looking for of ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

""Twas but a little drop of sin

We saw this morning enter in,

And lo! at eventide the world is drowned!"

Oh, my brethren, now and always let it be your most earnest endeavour to keep your moral instincts right and true. Never let them be disguised by sentiment; never let them be obliterated by self-indulgence, never let them be sophisticated by lies. Do not think that light words and careless thoughts about them will be indifferent, and will leave you unaffected by them. "Character," as is said by our latest moralist, "is not

cut in marble-it is not something solid and unalterable, it is something living and changing, and may become diseased, as our bodies do." You learn here, in season and out of season, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,—that obedience, diligence, honesty, truth, kindness, purity, are your duties to God. and man. You know that this teaching is right and true, and that, in time and in eternity, your happiness. depends thereon. Oh never lose sight of it! Say to yourselves, constantly, that this is good, and that is evil; this the noble course, that the base; this right, that wrong; this your duty and happiness, that your ruin and curse. Oh choose your side in the battle of life, and be not found on the wrong side. which is evil, cleave to that which is good.

Abhor that

III.-For, lastly, as you have heard the sin, and its cause, so in very few words hear its punishment. That punishment is nothing less than the failure of all life ;the waste, the loss, the shipwreck of the human soul;—the sapping of every moral force and every vital instinct;for "as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." How powerful is the metaphor! The rose is a glorious flower, yet how often have you seen a rose-tree shrivelled withered, blasted, producing nothing but mouldering and loathly buds ;-why? Because there is some poison in the sap, or some canker at the root. Have you never seen it so? Have you never seen careers that might have been very happy, very innocent, very prosperous-cut short, blighted, in disgrace? And that is sad enough; but alas! there is something much sadder: there is the

paralysis of the conscience, the searing as with a hot iron of the very faculty whereby we discriminate between right and wrong. As the Israelites preferred the wretched slavery and reeking fleshpots of Egypt to the manna, which was angels' food; as the pure, delicious water is loathsome to the scorched palate of the drunkard: so do these in their depraved souls learn at last, not merely to call evil good and good evil, but also to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. "Like natural brute beasts," they have lost the distinctions between right and wrong. That is a powerful and

tragic line of the Roman satirist :

"Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.”

Let them see virtue, and pine for it, now that it is beyond their reach. But it is a worse stage still not even to see, not even to pine for it; as there is hope for the wound that throbs with agony, but none for that which has mortified to painlessness. And this is death. This is the worst woe that can befall finally those who have learnt to call things by their wrong names—to call evil good, and good evil. "How easy," says a Christian poet, and it may well sum up some of the lessons of to-day:

"How easy to keep free from sin;

Dec. 8, 1872.

How hard that freedom to recall !
For dreadful truth it is, that men
Forget the heavens from which they fall."1

1 Coventry Patmore.

SERMON XV.

COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD.

ROM. xii. 21.

"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

You have heard these words in the Epistle of to-day, and you will remember that their first application is to that spirit of gentleness and brotherly kindness, that noble willingness to forget ourselves and to live for the good of others, which, in the long run, triumphs over malignity itself. Take less than your due, St. Paul says; think lowly of yourselves; be not resentful of injuries; if others act wrongly or unkindly, revenge yourselves by a generosity which will win over all but the basest natures, and which, even if it does not win them, will ennoble you.

But the words of my text have a wider and richer bearing, and believing that St. Paul would be the first to rejoice that they should be accepted in their very fullest significance, I urge you to-day, on this first Sunday of a new term, to take as your wise and constant motto this exhortation: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

1. "Be not overcome of evil :" those words, you see, contain at once a warning of danger and an encouragement to resistance. They assume, as all Scripture does