There is, sixth, the strange love of consistency which tones all life
down or up to one tint, as near as may be. There comes at last
despair.

But not merely does every sin tend to repeat itself and to draw others
after it. It tends to repeat itself in aggravated forms. There is
growth, the law of increase as well as of perpetuity. The seed
produces 'some sixty and some an hundredfold.'

And so the slaughtered soldiers and desolated homesteads of Israel
were the sequel of the cloth on Ben-hadad's face. The secret of much
enormous crime is the kind of relief from conscience which is found in
committing a yet greater sin. The Furies drive with whips of
scorpions, and the poor wretch goes plunging and kicking deeper and
deeper in the mire, further and farther from the path. So you can
never say: 'I will only do this one wrong thing.'

We see here how powerless against sin are all restraints. The prophecy
did not prevent Hazael from his sins. The clear sense that they were
sins did not prevent him. The horror-struck shudder of conscience did
not prevent him. It was soon gagged.

Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter. Christ reveals us to
ourselves. Christ breaks the chain of sin, makes a new beginning, cuts
off the entail, reverses the irreversible, erases the indelible,
cancels the irrevocable, forgives all the faultful past, and by the
power of His love in the soul, works a mightier miracle than changing
the Ethiopian's skin; teaches them that are accustomed to evil to do
well, and though sins be as scarlet, makes them white as snow. He