ed you through ten thousand mercies.
Oh, believe me, our need to-night is not so much for more light as it
is for courage to live up to the light we have.

Not only was Manasseh guilty because he sinned in spite of the help of
a godly father and in spite of repeated warnings. His guilt was
deepened yet more because he knew that he did not sin alone. When he
went away from God he carried a kingdom with him. The reign of
Hezekiah had been a righteous reign. With the coming of Manasseh to
the throne there was a violent reaction, akin to that that followed
upon the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. You know
how that when Charles came to the throne the court life was changed
into a brothel. Charles lived in open and notorious adultery, and the
rottenness of the throne led to the rottenness of the kingdom. Such
was the case here. Manasseh not only fell but he drew a kingdom after
him.

It is profoundly true that no man ever sins alone. Your influence will
not be so wide as that of Manasseh, yet however obscure your life may
be this is true, that it will set in motion influences that will
literally outlast the world. I have control over my own action before
it is done, but after it is done I seek to control it in vain. If it
is a fiendish act it laughs its devilish and derisive laughter in my
face and says, "Control me if you can."

Now, there came a time when this great sinner began to pay the penalty
for his sin. Retribution slipped in by the guards at the door one day
and took the king rudely by the shoulder. It shook him and shook him
so roughly that his crown fell from his head and his sceptre dropped
from his hand. Then it dragged him from his throne and dressed him in
chains and sent him a captive into a foreign country.

Retribution, suffering for sin, does not always come as it came to this
king. It does not always come at once but come it does. That is as
sure as the fact of God. There are some shallow souls that fancy that
because sin does not pay off every Saturday night that it does not pay
at all. But to hold such views is to spit in the face of a most open
and palpable fact. Manasseh had a fancy that he was a much freer man
than his father had been, far more broad-minded, but he waked one day,
as every man wakes sooner or later, to discover that sin did not mean
freedom, that it only meant slavery.

Now, what effect did this degradation and shame and suffering have on
t