February 8
Sin Spells Suicide
In the Hour of Silence"All the merry-hearted do sigh."—Isaiah 24:7.
THE sinner is his own worst enemy. Remorse and disquietude and fear—these are the harvests he reaps. For all his bluster and parade, for all his laughter and gaiety, he carries a heavy heart.
He is without the gladness of pardon. The thundercloud of God's displeasure hangs lowering and fateful over him. There is a sunless, starless, cheerless future awaiting him. There is guilt with which he is chargeable. His sin merits a fearful wage—the wage of awful death; and, if God does not pay at the end of every week, at last He pays to the uttermost farthing.
He is without the blessedness of purity. Evil passions toss him hither and thither. He is led captive by his lust. At times he loathes himself and longs for deliverance. "Oh," he cries, "oh for a man to arise in me, that the man I am might cease to be!" But he is helpless: the wicked thing reasserts itself, and he is compelled to do the bidding of his tyrant.
He is without the sweetness of peace. A certain forced and fitful vivacity, an excitement and an unreal happiness, he may have for a while; but even this disappears soon. The apples are apples of Sodom, with nought but mouldering dust beneath the rosy rind. And as for any genuine and firm-rooted and satisfying peace, it and he have never once met—they are strangers one to the other.
So all the merry-hearted do sigh. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction. But I will turn me from my sin, my sin with its miserable issues, to God in Jesus Christ. And then I shall have pardon and purity and peace.