duties, and ignorance of that solemn future, the fact of which is
plain to most men, but the how of which is such a blank mystery but
for Jesus Christ--these things are elements of the darkness that
wraps the world. Go to heathendom if you want to see the problem
worked out, as to what men know outside of the revelation which
culminates in Jesus Christ. And take your own hearts, dear friends
who stand aside from that sweet Lord and light of our lives, and ask
yourselves, What do I know, with a certainty which is to me as
valid, as--yea! more valid than that given by sense and outward
perceptions? What do I know of God that I do not owe to Jesus
Christ? Nothing. You may guess much, you may hope a little, you may
dread a great deal, you may question more than all, but you will
_know_ nothing.

Well, then, further, this solemn emblem stands for impurity. And we
have only to consult our own hearts to feel how true it is about us
all, that we dwell in a region all darkened, if not by the coarse
transgressions which men consent to call sins, yet darkened more
subtly and oftentimes more hopelessly by the obscuration of pure
selfishness and living to myself and by myself. Wherever that comes,
it is like the mists that steal up from some poisonous marsh, and
shut out stars and sky, and drape the whole country in a melancholy
veil. It is white but it is poisonous, it is white but it is
darkness all the same. There are other kinds of sin than the sins
that break the Ten Commandments; there are other kinds of sin than
the sins that the world takes cognisance of. The worst poisons are
the tasteless ones, and colourless gases are laden with fatal power.
We may walk in a darkness that may be felt, though there be nothing
in our lives that men call sin, and little there of which our
consciences are as yet educated enough to be ashamed. Rent from God,