uring my boyhood. Perhaps I can
hope the same from God; I take his word for it.

But if you or I think that it is safe to trifle with God's laws, we
are terribly mistaken. The Lord proclaimed himself to Moses as "The
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no
means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and
to the fourth generation." But someone will say, This is terrible.
It is terrible; but the question is, Does the Bible speak the truth
about nature? Is nature a "fairy godmother," or does she bring men
up with sternness and inflict suffering upon the innocent children,
if necessary, lest they copy after their sinful parents? Do the
children of the defaulter and drunkard and debauchee suffer because
of the sins of their father, or do they not? If the blessings won by
parental virtue go down to the thousandth generation, must not the
evil consequences of sin go down to the third or fourth?

That we are not under the law, but under grace, does not mean, as
some seem to think, that it is safe to sin. Otherwise the
forgiveness of God becomes the lowest form of indulgence
slanderously attributed to the Church of Rome. We gain freedom from
law as well as penalty only by obedience. The artist can safely
forget the laws and rules of his art only when by long obedience and
practice he obeys them unconsciously. We seem to be threatened with
a belief that God will never punish sin in one who has professed
Christianity. This view cheapens sin and makes pardon worthless, it
takes the iron out of the blood, and the backbone out of all our
religion and ethics. It ruins Christians and disgraces Christianity.
We sometimes seem to think that our nation or church or denomination
is so important to the carrying on of God's work that he cannot
afford to let any evil befall us, whatever we may do or be.

"Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes
of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.
They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The
heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for
hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean
upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come
upon us. T