SERMON VI.

SIN DETECTED AND EXPOSED.

NUMBERS XXXii. 23. And be sure your sin will find you out.

THE Great God is a terrible enemy to all sin. He cannot look upon it without abhorrence. He solemnly commands men not to commit it; and if they have committed it, he requires them to repent of it, to forsake it, and to repair to the blood of Jesus Christ that it may be washed away. This is their only hope; and he urges them to do this, so that "their iniquity may not be their ruin."

Yet, strange to say, there are very many persons who will sin; they love to sin; they are determined to sin, be the consequences what they may. But they do not mean to be found out; they sin secretly, and have an inward hope that their wickedness will never be known. Now, God says to all such persons, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Nothing is more true than this; and I wish, by God's blessing, so to exhibit and prove this truth, that all may see, and feel it; may forsake their sins, and find mercy. I remark, therefore,

I. In the first place, that the man who indulges himself in secret sin has, within his own bosom, a conscience which will betray him.

He is acquainted with his own sin; if nobody else knows it, he himself knows it. King Solomon said to

Shimei, the Benjamite, who abused David in the day of his calamity, and cursed him, "Thou knowest all the wickedness which thy heart is privý to, that thou didst to David, my father: therefore the Lord shall return thy wickedness upon thine own head." No man need expect to keep his sins secret, so long as he knows them himself. He may forget them, and for a while lose sight of them; but when his memory comes to be refreshed, and he is reminded of them; when he is forced to call them to remembrance, and cannot help reflecting upon them, nor divert his mind from the melancholy subject; the only relief he has is to make them known. I have known of men who stole money from their employers, and nobody knew it but themselves, whose conscience was so burdened with the sin, that they could not rest until they had gone and confessed it, and made restitution. I have read of a murderer, who had wickedly killed one of his fellow creatures, and who never was detected by all the search that could be made, who, years after the crime was committed, was so troubled in his own conscience for what he had done, that he went one day into open court, and told the judges that he was the guilty murderer. Men will always expose their own sins when they find greater relief of mind in confessing them than in keeping them secret. And they had often rather confess them, and know the worst, than suffer the slow flame to be always burning in their own bosoms.

There are sins with which no man can trust himself. His conscience will tell of them. When he was about to commit them, she tried to prevent him; by all the means in her power she tried to restrain him. She whispered in his ear, not to do the fearful deed; and

told him at the time, that if he would not listen to her, she would expose him. She was on the spot, and recorded it in her memory. And because he silenced her, and abused her, and treated her as an enemy, the time is coming when she will be revenged, and publish his wickedness to the world. That man is always miserable who has a guilty conscience. "A fire not blown consumes him." Conscious guilt renders him suspicious that others know all about him, and makes him afraid of everybody. He "trembles at the shaking of a leaf." He often suspects he is known, where he is unknown. If he is in the midst of friends, the sudden appearance of a strange face disturbs him; and the thought passes through his mind, perhaps this man knows me! In the midst of laughter, his mirth is boisterous, or his heart is sorrowful. An equivocal remark, an incidental inquiry, a scrutinizing glance alarms him. Like the guilty monarch of Babylon, whom we read of in the Bible, surrounded by his guards and princes, and amid all the delights of music and the revelry of feasting, he is terrified by a sentence which he does not even understand.

In the time of prosperity and glee, men may still the voice of conscience, though they are actually chargeable with atrocious crimes. But when calamity overtakes them, conscience is not always so easily silenced. More than twenty years rolled away, and Joseph's brethren appear to have had no compunction for selling their own father's son as a slave to the Midianites. They had kept the secret, and no doubt thought that it would remain buried in their own breasts. But in the providence of God they were sent into Egypt themselves, and by a cluster of circumstances which they

could not foresee, they stood agitated and trembling in the presence of that very brother whom they had so wickedly sold. He knew them, but they did not know him. And conscience could no longer sleep. They looked at one another, and all seemed to have, at once, the same self-reproving thoughts. And they said unto one another, "We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us!"

Conscience is the great betrayer of secret sin. It is one of the laws of God's government, that the apprehensions and forebodings of the mind under remorse shall, sooner or later, force the offender to the confession of his own guilt, and constrain him to be the publisher of his shame. No vigor of intellect, no strength of nerve, no sworn purpose of secrecy is able to stand out against the urgent pressure of a guilty and incensed conscience. When God commands her to speak, she will speak, and speak out, to the confusion of all the workers of iniquity. As nothing can suppress the inward complaints, so nothing can suppress the outward murmurings, of that inward condemnation which a guilty and terrified mind feels when bleeding, writhing under the agonies of an accusing conscience. You can go into no society where conscience is not one of your associates; you can enter no solitude where conscience does not follow you; conscience can make you pale on your lonely pillow; and even sleep, when it covers you with its heavy pall, does not so overpower the mind, but agitating dreams and visions creep stealthily beneath its folds, and this unwelcome messenger whispers, "Thou art the man!"

But this is not all: I remark

II. The man who practises secret sin may expect to be detected and exposed by the providence of God.

"Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth.” That God is everywhere. He is present with all his creatures, and with every one of them at the same time. He is in all places, even the most distant, without being separated by distance, or confined by space. Go beyond the height of the heavens, he is there; beyond the length of the earth, and the breadth of the ocean, he is there. The king's palace, and the seaman's cabin, alike contain him. The most lonesome as well as the most populous haunts of iniquity, the most hidden recesses and the deepest caverns of wickedness are always under his immediate inspection. Impious the thought, and vain the attempt, to fly from the face of God. Neither land, nor sea, nor earth, nor heaven, nor hell itself, has any retreat for man, where he can lurk unseen, and remain hidden from that all-seeing eye to which even the blackest darkness is not dark, and night itself is as light as day.

In a thousand ways, unknown and unsuspected by men, he can expose their sin, Strange indeed is it, that they should ever be so infatuated, as to persuade themselves that they can keep it secret when he undertakes to bring it to light. They may be politic and wise in their commission of it, while their very policy and wisdom may be so directed by his providence as to indicate the means of its discovery; and the very plans on which they have relied for concealing it may proclaim their guilt. How often has it been verified in the history of crime, that wonted forethought and prudence so forsake the transgressor, that it would seem