them. Temptation, when we yield, is succeeded by self-delusion.

The third and fourth verses follow clearly with the aggravated effects.
Sin ceases to flatter, and the man's habits are openly upon him. Truth,
common-sense and all virtue are left behind:

_The words of his mouth are iniquity
and deceit,
He has given up thinking sensibly
and doing good._

So he becomes presumptuous and obstinate.

_He devises iniquity upon his bed_--which is but the Hebrew for 'planning
evil in cold blood'--

_He takes up his post on a way that
is not good,
He abhors not evil_.

There we have the whole biography of sin from its first whisper in the
centre of man's being, where it seems to speak with the mystery and power
of God's own word, to the time when, through the corruption of every
instinct and quality of virtue, it reaches the border of his being and
destroys the last possibility of penitence. It is the horror of Evil in
the four stages of its growth: Temptation, Delusion, Audacity, and Habit
ending in Death.

To us sin has not become any less of a mystery or a pain. Temptation is as
sudden and demonic. Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil