Him. We all know how sin weakens that.

Every sin diminishes our power of seeing Him in His external Revelation.
Every sin ruffles the surface of the soul, which is a mirror reflecting
the light that streams from Creation, from Providence, from History. A
mass of black rock flung into a still lake shatters the images of the
girdling woods and the overarching sky.

Every sin bribes us to forget God. It becomes our interest, as we fancy,
to shut Him out of our thoughts. Adam's impulse is to carry his guilty
secret with him into hiding among the trees of the garden. We cannot
shake off His presence, but we can--and when we have sinned, we have but
too good reason to exercise the power--we can dismiss the thought of
Him. 'They did not _like_ to retain God in their knowledge.'

Individual sins may seem of small moment, but an opaque veil can be
woven out of very fine thread.

II. To veil God from our sight is fatal.

We imagine that to forget Him leaves us undisturbed in following aims
disapproved by Him, and we spend effort to secure that false peace by
fierce absorption in other pursuits, and impatient shaking off of all
that might wake our sleeping consciousness of Him.

But what unconscious self-murder that is, which we take such pains to
achieve! To know God is life eternal; to lose Him from our sight is to
condemn all that is best in our nature, all that is most conducive to
blessedness, tranquillity, and strenuousness in our lives, to languish
and die. Every creature separated from God is cut off from the fountain