nk from the thought
that the wages of sin is death, even while we acknowledge that it is so.
It is inexpressibly sad to dwell on the infinite mass of sin which is
daily bearing its bitter and deadly fruit in the world, and propagating
itself after its kind; to think of the untold number of darkened or
misguided souls that have sown to the flesh, and are going in consequence
down to failure and death, blighted, corrupted, ruined. From this
thought we naturally turn to the thought of God's mercy, and pray that He
may yet sow the seeds of new hope in the dismal waste of such lives.

But it happens to us, I fear sometimes, that this thought of God's curse
on sin sends a chill through the heart, and we shrink away from it,
because of our own unregenerate life, because of the fascination which
sinful impulse or habit exercises over us.

If the warning voice of our Lenten Commination Service has convicted any
one of us of this motive for shrinking from its stern sentence, it has
come to us as a true messenger of the God who has no pleasure in the
death of him that dieth. We need the voice of these threatenings,
because the heart has such a great power of self-deception in it. Men
find it so easy to thrust away into the dim background of their thoughts
all the dark but sure consequences of present sins, treating them as a
debt which will come up no doubt for payment some day, but may be put
aside just now.

And one virtue of our stern plain-speaking Lenten services is this, that
they will not allow us to forget that fated reckoning day--they put us,
whether we like it or not, face to face with the sure consequences of
sin; and they compel us to listen to the question--"What is the choice of
thy life?"

For you will bear in mind that we read all these decrees of Divine law
with our eye fixed on our own life and not on our neighbour. They are
meant to help us to judge ourselves, and not some other person; they lead
us to penitence and not to criticism, so that our readiness or our
unwillingness to meet and to weigh them, and to respond to them with
definite prayer and penitence, may be taken as an index of our religious
sincerity, and of our readiness to consecrate our lives to the service of
our Saviour Christ.

And it is well for us that we should ask ourselves these questions; for
if indeed it is true that every transgression and disobedience shall
receive its just recompense and reward, how else shall we escape?