earnestness, can pursue it. No contrition of yours can drawback its
consequences. Remorse cannot force the bullet back again into the gun
from which it once has gone forth. It makes life awful to the man who
has ever sinned, who has ever wronged and hurt another life because of
this sin, because no sin ever was done that did not hurt another life. I
know the mercy of our God, that while He has put us into each other's
power to a fearful extent, He never will let any soul absolutely go to
everlasting ruin for another's sin; and so I dare to see the love of God
pursuing that lost soul where you cannot pursue it. But that does not
for one moment lift the shadow from your heart, or cease to make you
tremble when you think of how your sin has outgrown itself and is
running far, far away where you can never follow it.

Thank God the other thing is true as well. Thank God that when a man
does a bit of service, however little it may be, of that too he can
never trace the consequences. Thank God that that which in some better
moment, in some nobler inspiration, you did ten years ago to make your
brother's faith a little more strong, to let your shop boy confirm and
not doubt the confidence in man which he had brought into his business,
to establish the purity of a soul instead of staining it and shaking it,
thank God, in this quick, electric atmosphere in which we live, that,
too, runs forth. Do not say in your terror, "I will do nothing." You
must do something. Only let Christ tell you--let Christ tell you that
there is nothing that a man rests upon in the moment, that he thinks of,
as he looks back upon it when it has sunk into the past, with any
satisfaction, except some service to his fellow-man, some strengthening
and helping of a human soul.

Two men are walking down the street together and talking away. See what
different conditions those two men are in. One of them has his soul