Men--very often we do not trust them enough--will answer to the higher
appeal that seems to be beyond them when the poor, lower appeal that
comes within the region of their selfishness is cast aside, and they
will have nothing to do with it.

Oh, this marvellous, this awful power that we have over other people's
lives! Oh! the power of the sin that you have done years and years ago!
It is awful to think of it. I think there is hardly anything more
terrible to the human thought than this--the picture of a man who,
having sinned years and years ago in a way that involved other souls in
his sin, and then, having repented of his sin and undertaken another
life, knows certainly that the power, the consequence of that sin is
going on outside of his reach, beyond even his ken and knowledge. He
cannot touch it. You wronged a soul ten years ago. You taught a boy how
to tell his first mercantile lie; you degraded the early standards of
his youth. What has become of that boy to-day? You may have repented. He
has passed put of your sight. He has gone years and years ago. Somewhere
in this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinning
and reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched the
faith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer of
yours, with some cynical and sceptical disparagement of God and of the
man who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul that
was enthusiastic to be full of scepticisms and doubts. You wronged a
woman years ago, and her life has gone out from your life, you cannot
begin to tell where. You have repented of your sin. You have bowed
yourself, it may be, in dust and ashes. You have entered upon a new
life. You are pure to-day. But where is the sceptical soul? Where is the
ruined woman whom you sent forth into the world out of the shadow of
your sin years ago? You cannot touch that life. You cannot reach it. You
do not know where it is. No steps of yours, quickened with all your