Tell me you have a sin that you mean to commit this evening that is
going to make this night black. What can keep you from committing that
sin? Suppose you look into its consequences. Suppose the wise man tells
you what will be the physical consequences of that sin. You shudder and
you shrink, and, perhaps, you are partially deterred. Suppose you see
the; glory that might come to you, physical, temporal, spiritual, if you
do not commit that sin. The opposite of it shows itself to you--the
blessing and the richness in your life. Again there comes a great power
that shall control your lust and wickedness. Suppose there comes to you
something even deeper than that, no consequence on consequence at all,
but simply an abhorrence for the thing, so that your whole nature
shrinks from it as the nature of God shrinks from a sin that is
polluting and filthy and corrupt and evil. They are all great powers.
Let us thank God for them all. He knows that we are weak enough to need
every power that can possibly be brought to bear upon our feeble lives;
but if, along with all of them, there could come this other power, if
along with them there could come the certainty that if you refrain from
that sin to-night you make the sum of sin that is in the world, and so
the sum of all temptation that is in the world, and so the sum of future
evil that is to spring out of temptation in the world, less, shall there
not be a nobler impulse rise up in your heart, and shall you not say: "I
will not do it; I will be honest, I will be sober, I will be pure, at
least, to-night"? I dare to think that there are men here to whom that
appeal can come, men who, perhaps, will be all dull and deaf if one
speaks to them about their personal salvation; who, if one dares to
picture to them, appealing to their better nature, trusting to their
nobler soul, that there is in them the power to save other men from sin,
and to help the work of God by the control of their own passions and
the fulfilment of their own duty, will be stirred to the higher life.