y. He adds sin to sin, link to link, and
then the end comes, and the tyrant binds him hand and foot with his own
chain, and casts him into outer darkness, where there is weeping, and
gnashing of teeth. Very often the slaves of sin do not know that they
_are_ slaves. They talk about their freedom from restraint, they tell
us they are their own masters, they would have us believe that the
godly, who try to keep the commandments, and walk in the narrow way,
are slaves, but _they_ are free! Oh! fools, and slow of heart! As
well might a prisoner cover his irons with a cloak, and try to pass as
a free man. We can _hear the clank of the chains_. So is it with the
slave of sin. Once I visited a madhouse, and talked with some of the
poor patients. Some had one delusion, some another. One thought he
was a king, another fancied himself the heir to a fortune. But one
thing they all believed, that they were in their right minds.

My brothers, the slaves of sin are like these poor mad folk, they do
not understand that what they call freedom is slavery, that what they
style pleasure is misery, that instead of being the clever, reckless,
free people they think themselves, they are only mad people possessed
of the devil. First, then, we have seen that the servants of sin do
not know that they are slaves. The tyrant, Satan, blinds their eyes
before he binds them in the fetters of his prison house, even as the
Philistines blinded the strong man of old. Next, the servants of sin
bear about the marks of their master I have seen gangs of convicts
working on Dartmoor. You could not mistake them for anything else if
they were dressed in the best of clothing. The word _convict_ is
stamped upon every grey face, as plainly as the Government mark is
stamped upon their clothing. The servants of sin have their marks
also. Look at the shifty eyes, and downward glance of the knave and
the false man; mark the flushed brow and cruel eyes of the angry man;
see the weak lips and trembling hand of the drunkard; they bear the
marks of their slavery very plainly. So, too, the sensualist who lives
for his body, the impure man, the slave of lust, the criminal, haunted
by a guilty secret, the selfish worldling, who cares only for this
life; these all bear the traces of their sin upon them, these show
whose they are, and whom they serve. Again, the servants of sin have
their so-called enjoyments, these are the baits with which the tyrant
get