I have heard this so cleverly done, that the success was
complete, and the poor slandered one lost, in consequence, her admirer
or her friend, or at least much of her influence over them. You, too,
may in like manner succeed: but what is the loss of others in comparison
of the penalty of your success? The punishment of successful sin is not
to be escaped.
In any of the cases I here bring forward as illustrations, as helps to
your self-examination, I am not supposing that there is any tangible,
positive, wilful deceit in your heart, or that you deliberately
contemplate any very serious injury being inflicted on the persons whose
conversations and actions you misrepresent. On the contrary, I know that
you are not thus hardened in sin. With regard, however, to the deceit
not assuming any tangible form in your own eyes, you ought to remember
the solemn words, "Thou, O God I seest me;" and what is sin in his eyes
can only fail to be so in ours from the neglect of strict
self-examination and prayer that the Spirit of the Lord may search the
very depths of the heart. Sins of ignorance seem to assume even a deeper
dye than others, when the ignorance only arises from wilful neglect of
the means of knowledge so abundantly and freely bestowed.
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