isolated thing, which, as soon as it is done, disappears without a
God. He will defy God. He will become an atheist altogether. God did nothing to make man wicked or to deprave his heart. No ; he merely brought up to the surface the abominations which that heart contained. Nor was this the state of one heart alone. It was that of millions. It was that of each child of this fallen father.
3. He wished to shew the union between sin and sin. Sin is not an isolated thing, which, as soon as it is done, disappears without a trace or scar. It is necessarily, and by its very nature, linked with a thousand others. Cast a small pebble into the broad ocean, and it raises a ripple which expands, circle after circle, and ceases not till it has rolled itself upon the most distant shore. So with sin,—with one single sin, —even what we call the slightest. It is the root of millions. It perpetuates itself for ever. Like the ocean-ripple, its influence is beyond all calculation. Yet there is this difference between them. The ripple grows fainter and sinks lower as its circle widens and recedes from the centre. Not so with sin. What was a ripple at first, soon swells into a wave, ever rising higher, till we behold the huge, dark mountain-billow breaking upon the eternal Shore.*
* This law which regulates the spiritual world is the very same as that which on the lower scale of being regulates the natural world. A distinguished man of science in our day has given us a chapter in one of his works, "On the Permanent Impression of our Words and Actions on the Globe which we Inhabit." Its conclusions are startling, and, viewed in connection with the laws of higher being, most solemnising. "The principle," writes he, "of the equality of action and reaction, when traced through all its consequences, opens views which will appear to many persons most unexpected. The pulsations of air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they give rise. The motions they have impressed on the particles of one portion of our atmosphere, are communicated