The sinking or the soaring
of my nature has therefore nothing whatever to do with you. It is a
strictly personal question. But what I specially wish to advise you
of this morning,--taking myself as an example,--is that none of you,
whether inclined to virtue or to vice, should remain such arrant
fools as to imagine that your sins will not find you out. They
will,--the instant they are committed, their sole mission is to
start on your track, and hunt you down! I cannot absolutely vouch to
you that there is a God,--but I am positive there is a hidden
process of mathematics going on in the universe which sums up our
slightest human affairs with an exactitude which at the least is
amazing. Twenty-five years ago I did a great wrong to a human
creature who was innocent, and who absolutely trusted me. There is
no crime worse than this, yet it seemed to me quite a trifling
affair,--an amusement--a nothing! I was perfectly aware that by some
excessively straightlaced people it might be termed a sin; but my
ideas of sin were as easy and condoning as yours are. I never
repented it,--I can hardly say I ever thought of it,--if I did I
excused myself quickly, and assured my own conscience in the usual
way, that the fault was merely the result of circumstances over
which I had no control.
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