to think that professing Christians do often come into that position of
being, by their inflamed passions and enfeebled wills, servants of the
evil that they do. Alas! how many of us, if we were honest with
ourselves, would have to say. 'I am carnal, sold unto sin.'

That is not the lowest rung of the slippery ladder. Despotic sin ends in
utter departure.

The word translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and
intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a _great_
transgression,' literally means _rebellion_, _revolt_, or some such
idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression
prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an entire casting off of
allegiance to God. 'No man can serve two masters.' 'His servants ye are
whom ye obey,' whomsoever ye may call your master. The Psalmist feels
that the end of indulged evil is going over altogether to the other
camp. I suppose all of us have known instances of that sort. Men in my
position, with a long life of ministry behind them, can naturally
remember many such instances. And this is the outline history of the
suicide of a Christian. First secret sin, unsuspected, because the
conscience is torpid; then open sin, known to be such, but done
nevertheless; then dominant sin, with an enfeebled will and power of
resistance; then the abandonment of all pretence or profession of
religion. The ladder goes down into the pit, but not to the bottom of
the pit. And the man that is going down it has a descending impulse
after he has reached the bottom step and he falls--Where? The first step
down is tampering with conscience. It is neither safe nor wise to do
anything, howsoever small, against that voice. All the rest will come
afterward, unless God restrains--'first the blade, then the ear, then
the full corn in the ear,' and then the bitter harvest of the poisonous