words to our own times, to our own dangers, to our own hearts, it must fill us with a just dread. God is not misled by these outward shows that so much deceive us. The greatest sinners He beholds are not those to whose charge the greatest crimes are laid. They may be men who have a fair standing in the world, and have put forth their hands to no evil acts; yet the publicans and harlots may enter the kingdom of heaven before them.

Such is the secret and subtle power of sin. And until we look deeper than our outward life, until we enter the inner chambers of the heart, and see what it is that we keep and cherish there, how can we tell, though we may stand ever so fair before the world, but that our final doom may be more awful than that of many whose memories have perished through infamy and crime? Think you that these were sinners above all men? I tell you nay. Their one act of guilt, terrible though it was, may not so deeply condemn them, as a long, careless, self-indulgent life may condemn us.

SERMON XIII.

ANODYNES.

"Yet they say the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it." - PSALM XCIV. 7.

A GLIMPSE of the true state of our hearts may lead us to cast about for something to quiet our apprehensions; and the text suggests two ways by which men do this.

One is by supposing that human actions and states of feeling are things too small for God to see; the other is by believing them to be, in their moral complexion, too indifferent for God to regard. Thus we grow bold and careless upon the presumption either of his oversight or of his indulgence.

It is the same danger in our relation to the Divine parent which, as we all know, exists with every youth in his relation to the earthly parent. For nothing is more common, and nothing is more fatal for a child to say, My father, in his many cares, will not see this little offense; or if he sees it, he is too complacent to reprove it.

We impute to God the imperfections of man, and repeat in our maturity the excuses which we learned in our youth.

It may be of some use to see that these excuses are nugatory, founded on misconceptions of God's character, allying themselves to some of the most fatal weaknesses of our hearts, softening and silencing the remonstrances of conscience, encouraging us along a downward path of peril, in which we can be arrested only by the considerate and careful, strict and stringent conviction, that the Lord does see, the God of Jacob does regard it.

And, in relation to the first point, that God is too great to notice small things, ought we not rather to say that He notices them because He is so great, that to his infinite capacities "no high, no low, no great, no small appears,” for He comprehends them all alike; that the terms vast and minute have reference only to our way of judging things; and that the child's hope of impunity in small offenses springs from the fact that his father is not great enough to pay attention to those first slight transgressions, which yet may be the most serious and momentous of all?

Perhaps we all have noticed, in the case of an earthly father, that the more vigorous and comprehensive is his mind, and the more tender and fervent is his parental affection, the more solicitude does he feel to guard against the earliest small beginnings of disobedience. That is to say, perfection in the parental relation is marked, not by any disposition to overlook little things, but by a condescension and care which takes even these into

account, which explains the principle that underlies them, points out the danger of proceeding step by step to larger offenses, and thus insists upon a degree of attention to the earliest fountains of wrong, and a searching watchfulness in regard to them, which oftentimes makes a child wonder why his father will be so scrupulous and precise.

And mark the reason for this minute care which we, who are parents, have so frequently given to our children. How often have we told them, and told them truly, that it is no proof that an act is of trifling importance because it seems so to them; that the motive with which it is done invests the smallest deed with a character of its own; and that the rapidity with which we go from less to greater, and the ease with which we slide into habits, attach a quite inconceivable interest to the first wandering of our feet, the first wavering of our will. How often has a wise parent thus tried to correct his child's haste, heedlessness, his contempt for little things, and to brace his mind up to that more watchful virtue which keeps its careful eye on every act he performs.

These considerations which we have so often suggested to our children, do we not see with what force they apply to ourselves as children of the Great Father above? And when we are tempted to feel of some slight act of disobedience, of some wrong motive rising within, that this is too little for God to notice, let us remember that it is no

proof that it is little because it seems so to us. Trifling as it may appear, yet regarded as the first step of a path that may conduct far astray in peril and woe, what interests of years and ages may be suspended on that little step! It is a proof of the perfection of the Divine mind, seeing all things from the beginning to the end, to notice that act with a degree of attention far above what we accord to it; and this may be one of our most pressing spiritual needs to brace up our own minds to that same vigilant and stringent virtue, which will permit no moral act whatever to be beneath our regard.

And, therefore, while there may be something almost ludicrous in the contrast between the greatness of God on the one hand, and the insignificance of some little deed we perform on the other hand, — while we may feel, of a conscious wrong we commit in a petty case, that really this is too trifling an act for the mighty Sovereign of the universe to stoop to notice, while we feel so, may it not be that the absurdity of this contrast is seen only at our point of view, that it arises from a defect in our moral perspective, and that could we see this act with the eye of Him who takes in all its consequences at a glance, we should perceive that no event of our lives was more momentous than the deed which, at the time, we regarded as too insignificant for any serious thought?

Who can doubt that the time will come when