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which ought to warn and to scare away, are planted along the barrier; and when, in defiance to them, the barrier is broken, man will not be checked by any sense of honesty, at least, from expatiating over the whole of the forbidden territory. And thus may we gather from the countless peccadilloes which are so current in the various departments of trade, and service, and agencyfrom the secret freedoms in which many do indulge, without one remonstrance from their own heart-from the petty inroads that are daily practised on the confines of justice, by which its line of demarcation is trodden under foot, and it has lost the moral distinctness, and the moral charm, that should have kept it unviolate-from the exceeding multitude of such offences as are frivolous in respect of the matter of them, but most fearfully important in respect of the principle in which they originatefrom the woful amount of that unseen and unrecorded guilt which escapes the cognizance of the human law, but on the application of the touchstone in our text, may be made to stand out in characters of severest condemnation-from instances, too numerous to repeat, but certainly too obvious to be missed, even by the observation of charity, may we gather the frailty of human principle, and the virulence of that moral poison, which is now in such full circulation to taint and to adulterate the character of our species.

tising, in littles, at the work of secret appropriation-those whose hands are in a state of constant defilement, by the putting of them forth to that which they ought to touch not, and taste not, and handle notthose who silently number such pilferments as can pass unnoticed among the perquisites of their office; and who, by an excess in their charges, just so slight as to escape detection-or by a habit of purloining, just so restrained as to elude discovery, have both a conscience very much at ease in their own bosoms, and a credit very fair, and very entire, among their acquaintances around them. They grossly count upon the smallness of their transgression. But they are just going in a small way to hell. They would recoil with violent dislike from the act of a midnight depredator. It is just because terrors, and trials, and executions, have thrown around it the pomp and the circumstance of guilt. But at another bar, and on a day of more dreadful solemnity, their guilt will be made to stand out in its essential characters, and their condemnation will be pronounced from the lips of Him who judgeth righteously. They feel that they have incurred no outrageous forfeiture of character among men, and this instils a treacherous complacency into their own hearts. But the piercing eye of Him who looketh down from heaven is upon the reality of the question;, and He who ponders the secrets of every bosom, can perceive, that the man who recoils only Before finishing this branch of our subfrom such a degree of injustice as is noto-ject, we may observe, that it is with this, as rious, may have no justice whatever in his with many other phenomena of the human character. He may have a sense of repu- character, that we are not long in contation. He may have the fear of detection templation upon it, without coming in sight and disgrace. He may feel a revolt in his of that great characteristic of fallen man, constitution against the magnitude of a which meets and forces itself upon us in gross and glaring violation. He may even every view that we take of him-even the share in all the feelings and principles of great moral disease of ungodliness. It is that conventional kind of morality which at the precise limit between the right and obtains in his neighbourhood. But, of that the wrong that the flaming sword of God's principle which is surrendered by the least law is placed. It is there that "Thus saith act of unfaithfulness, he has no share what- the Lord" presents itself, in legible characHe perceives no overawing sacred-ters, to our view. It is there where the openess in that boundary which separates the ration of his commandment begins; and right from the wrong. If he only keep not at any of those higher gradations, where decently near, it is a matter of indifference a man's dishonesty first appals himself by to him whether he be on this or on that the chance of its detection, or appals others side of it. He can be unfaithful in that by the mischief and insecurity which it which is least: There may be other prin- brings upon social life. An extensive ciples, and other considerations to restrain fraud upon the revenue, for example, unhim; but certain it is, that it is not now the popular as this branch of justice is, would principle of justice which restrains him from bring a man down from his place of emibeing unfaithful in much.-This is given nence and credit in mercantile society. up; and, through a blindness to the great That petty fraud which is associated with and important principle of our text, this so many of those smaller payments, where virtue may, in its essential character, be as a lie in the written acknowledgment is both good as banished from the world. All its given and accepted, as a way of escape from protections may be utterly overthrown. the legal imposition, circulates at large The line of defence is effaced by which it among the members of the great trading ought to have been firmly and scrupulously community. In the former, and in all the guarded. The sign-posts of intimation, greater cases of injustice, there is a human

ever.

restraint, and a human terror, in operation. There is disgrace and civil punishment, to scare away. There are all the sanctions of that conventional morality which is suspended on the fear of man, and the opinion of man; and which, without so much as the recognition of a God, would naturally point its armour against every outrage that could sensibly disturb the securities and the rights of human society. But so long as the disturbance is not sensible-so long as the injustice keeps within the limits of smallness and secrecy-so long as it is safe for the individual to practise it, and, borne along on the tide of general example and connivance, he has nothing to restrain him but that distinct and inflexible word of God, which proscribes all unfaithfulness, and admits of it in no degrees, and no modifications-then, let the almost universal sleep of conscience attest, how little of God there is in the virtue of this world; and how much the peace and the protection of society are owing to such moralities, as the mere selfishness of man would lead him to ordain, even in a community of atheists.

II. Let us now attempt to unfold a few of the practical consequences that may be drawn from the principle of the text, both in respect to our general relation with God, and in respect to the particular lesson of faithfulness which may be educed from it. 1. There cannot be a stronger possible illustration of our argument, than the very first act of retribution that occurred in the history of our species. "And God said unto Adam, Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. But the woman took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

events, his attribute of truth stood committed to the fulfilment of the threatening; and the very insignificancy of the deed, which provoked the execution of it, gives a sublimer character to the certainty of the fulfilment. We know how much this trait, in the dealings of God with man, has been the jeer of infidelity. But in all this ridicule, there is truly nothing else than the grossness of materialism. Had Adam, instead of plucking one single apple from the forbidden tree, been armed with the power of a malignant spirit, and spread a wanton havoc over the face of paradise, and spoiled the garden of its loveliness, and been able to mar and to deform the whole of that terrestrial creation over which God had so recently rejoiced-the punishment he sustained would have looked to these arithmetical moralists, a more adequate return for the offence of which he had been guilty. They cannot see how the moral lesson rises in greatness, just in proportion to the humility of the material accompaniments-and how it wraps a sublimer glory around the holiness of the Godhead-and how from the transaction, such as it is, the conclusion cometh forth more nakedly, and, therefore, more impressively, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against the Lawgiver. God said, "Let there be light, and it was light;" and it has ever been regarded as a sublime token of the Deity, that, from an utterance so simple, an accomplishment so quick and so magnificent should have followed. God said, "That he who eateth of the tree in the midst of the garden should die." It appears indeed, but a little thing, that one should put forth his hand to an apple and taste of it. But a saying of God was involved in the matter-and heaven and earth must pass away, ere a saying of his can pass away; and so the apple became decisive of the fate of a world; and, out of the very scantiness of the occasion, did there emerge a sublimer display of 'truth and of holiness. The beginning of the world was, indeed, the period of great manifestations of the Godhead; and they all seem to accord, in style and character, with each other; and in that very history, which has called forth the profane and unthinking levity of many a scorner, may we behold as much of the majesty of principle, as in the creation of light, we behold of the majesty of power.

What is it that invests the eating of a solitary apple with a grandeur so momentous? How came an action in itself so minute, to be the germ of such mighty consequences? How are we to understand that our first parents, by the doing of a single instant, not only brought death upon themselves, but shed this big and baleful disaster over all their posterity? We may not be able to answer all these questions, but we may at least learn, what a thing of danger it is, under the government of a holy and inflexible God, to tamper with the limits of obe- But this history furnishes the materials dience. By the eating of that apple, a clear of a contemplation still more practical. If, requirement was broken, and a distinct for this one offence, Adam and his posterity transition was made from loyalty to rebel- have been so visited-if so rigorously and lion, and an entrance was effected into the so inflexibly precise be the spirit of God's region of sin-and thus did this one act administration-if, under the economy of serve like the opening of a gate for a torrent heaven, sin, even in the very humblest of of mighty mischief; and if the act itself was its exhibitions, be the object of an intolera trifle, it just went to aggravate its guilt-ance so jealous and so unrelenting-if the that, for such a trifle, the authority of God Deity be such as this transaction manifests could be despised and trampled on. At all him to be, disdainful of fellowship even with

Now, let the sinner have his conscience schooled by such a contemplation, and

the very least iniquity, and dreadful in the | him who is awakened thereby, that, unless certainty of all his accomplishments against God himself point out a way of escape, we it-if, for a single transgression, all the are indeed most hopelessly sunk in conpromise and all the felicity of paradise had demnation. And, seeing that such wrath to be broken up, and the wretched offen- went out from the sanctuary of this unders had to be turned abroad upon a world, changeable God, on the one offence of our now changed by the curse into a wilder- first parents, it irresistibly follows, that if ness, and their secure and lovely home of we, manifold in guilt, take not ourselves to innocence behooved to be abandoned, and his appointed way of reconciliation-if we to keep them out, a flaming sword had to refuse the overtures of Him, who then so turn every way, and guard their reaccess to visited the one offence through which all the bowers of immortality—if sin be so very are dead, but is now laying before us all hateful in the eye of unspotted holiness, that free gift, which is of many offences that, on its very first act, and first appear unto justification-in other words, if we ance, the wonted communion between hea- will not enter into peace through the ofven and earth was interdicted-if that was fered Mediator, how much greater must be the time at which God looked on our spe- the wrath that abideth on us? cies with an altered countenance, and one deed of disobedience proved so terribly decisive of the fate and history of a world-there will be no rest whatever for his soul what should each individual amongst us think of his own danger, whose life has been one continued habit of disobedience? If we be still in the hands of that God who laid so fell a condemnation on this one transgression, let us just think of our many transgressions, and that every hour we live multiplies the account of them; and that, however they may vanish from our own remembrance, they are still alive in the records of a judge whose eye and whose memory never fail him. Let us transfer the lesson we have gotten of heaven's jurisprudence from the case of our first parents to our own case. Let us compare our lives with the law of God, and we shall find that our sins are past reckoning. Let us take account of the habitual posture of our souls, as a posture of dislike for the things that are above, and we shall find that our thoughts and our desires are ever running in one current of sinfulness. Let us just make the computation how often we fail in the bidden charity, and the bidden godliness, and the bidden long suffering-all as clearly bidden as the duty that was laid on our first parents-and we shall find, that we are borne down under a mountain of iniquity; that, in the language of the Psalmist, our transgressions have gone over our heads, and, as a heavy burden, are too heavy for us; and if we be indeed under the government of Him who followed up the offence of the stolen apple by so dreadful a chastisement, then is wrath gone out unto the uttermost against every one of us. -There is something in the history of that apple which might be brought specially to bear on the case of those small sinners who practise in secret at the work of their petty depredations. But it also carries in it a great and a universal moral. It tells us that no sin is small. It serves a general purpose of conviction. It holds out a most alarming disclosure of the charge that is against us; and makes it manifest to the conscience of

till he find it in the Saviour. Let him only learn, from the dealings of God with the first Ádam, what a God of holiness he himself has to deal with; and let him further learn, from the history of the second Adam, that to manifest himself as a God of love, another righteousness had to be brought in, in place of that from which man had fallen so utterly away. There was a faultless obedience rendered by Him, of whom it is said, that he fulfilled all righteousness. There was a magnifying of the law by one in human form, who up to the last jot and tittle of it, acquitted himself of all its obligations. There was a pure, and lofty, and undefiled path, trodden by a holy and harmless Being, who gave not up his work upon earth, till ere he left it, he could ery out, that it was finished; and so had wrought out for us a perfect righteousness. Now, it forms the most prominent annunciation of the New Testament, that the reward of this righteousness is offered unto all-so that there is not one of us who is not put by the gospel upon the alternative of being either tried by our own merits, or treated according to the merits of Him who became sin for us, though he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Let the sinner just look unto himself, and look unto the Saviour. Let him advert not to his one, but to his many offences; and that, too, in the sight of a God, who, but for one so slight and so insignificant in respect of the outward description, as the eating of a forbidden ap ple, threw off a world into banishment, and entailed a sentence of death upon all its generations. Let him learn from this, that for sin, even in its humblest degrees, there exists in the bosom of the Godhead no toleration; and how shall he dare, with the degree and the frequency of his own sin, to stand any longer on a ground, where, if he remain, the fierceness of a consuming fire is so sure to overtake him? The righ

teousness of Christ is without a flaw, and | fan and to perpetuate his hostility against there he is invited to take shelter. Under sin; and all the powers of the gospel enable the actual regimen, which God has established in our world, it is indeed his only security-his refuge from the tempest, and hiding place from the storm. The only beloved Son offers to spread his own unspotted garment as a protection over him; and, if he be rightly alive to the utter nakedness of his moral and spiritual condition he will indeed make no tarrying till he be found in Christ, and find that in him there is no condemnation.

him, more and more, to fulfil the desires of his heart, and to carry his purposes of hostility into execution. In the case of every genuine believer, who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit, do we behold a fulfilling of the righteousness of the law-a strenuous avoidance of sin, in its slightest possible taint or modification-a strenuous performance of duty, up to the last jot and tittle of its exactions-so, that let the untrue professors of the faith do what they will in the way of antinomianism, and let the enemies of the faith say what they will about our antinomianism, the real spirit of the dispensation under which we live is such, that whosoever shall break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, is accounted the least-whosoever shall do and teach them is accounted the greatest.

The

Now, it is worthy of remark, that those principles, which shut a man up unto the faith, do not take flight and abandon him, after they have served this temporary purpose. They abide with him, and work their appropriate influence on his character, and serve as the germ of a new moral creation; and we can afterwards detect their operation in his heart and life; so, that if they were present at the formation of a 2. Let us, therefore, urge the spirit and saving belief, they are not less unfailingly the practice of this lesson upon your obserpresent with every true Christian, through-vation. The place for the practice of it out the whole of his future history, as the is the familiar and week-day scene. elements of a renovated conduct. If it was sensibility to the evil of sin which helped to wean the man from himself, and led him to his Saviour, this sensibility does not fall asleep in the bosom of an awakened sinner, after Christ has given him light-but it grows with the growth, and strengthens with the strength, of his Christianity. If, It may look to some a degradation of the at the interesting period of his transition pulpit, when the household servant is told from nature to grace, he saw, even in the to make her firm stand against the tempvery least of his offences, a deadly provo-tation of open doors, and secret opportunication of the Lawgiver, he does not lose ties; or when the confidential agent is told sight of this consideration in his future pro-to resist the slightest inclination to any ungress-nor does it barely remain with him, like one of the unproductive notions of an inert and unproductive theory. It gives rise to a fearful jealousy in his heart of the least appearance of evil; and, with every man who has undergone a genuine process of conversion, do we behold the scrupulous avoidance of sin, in its most slender, as well as in its more aggravated forms. If it was the perfection of the character of Christ, who felt that it became him to fulfil all righteousness, that offered him the first solid foundation on which he could lean then, the same character, which first drew his eye for the purpose of confidence, still continues to draw his eye for the purpose of imitation. At the outset of faith, all the essential moralities of thought, and feeling, and conviction, are in play; nor is there any thing in the progress of a real faith which is calculaled to throw them back again into the dormancy out of which they had arisen. They break out, in fact, into more full and flourishing display on every new creature, with every new step, and new evolution, in his mental history, All the principles of the gospel serve, as it were, to

principle for the spirit of it descends upon the heart, from the sublimest heights of the sanctuary of God. It is not vulgarizing Christianity to bring it down to the very humblest occupations of human life. It is, in fact, dignifying human life, by bringing it up to the level of Christianity.

seen freedom with the property of his employers, or to any undiscoverable excess in the charges of his management; or when the receiver of a humble payment is told, that the tribute which is due on every written acknowledgment ought faithfully to be met, and not fictitiously to be evaded. This is not robbing religion of its sacredness, but spreading its sacredness over the face of society. It is evangelizing human life, by impregnating its minutest transactions with the spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening the wall of partition between sin and obedience. It is the teacher of righteousness taking his stand at the outpost of that territory which he is appointed to defend, and warning his hearers of the danger that lies in a single footstep of encroachment. It is letting them know, that it is in the act of stepping over the limit, that the sinner throws the gauntlet of his defiance against the authority of God. And though he may deceive himself with the imagination that his soul is safe, because the gain of his injustice is small, such is the God with whom he has to do, that, if it be gain to the value of a single apple, then, within the compass

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of so small an outward dimension, may as
much guilt be enclosed as that which hath
brought death into our world, and carried it
down in a descending ruin upon all its
generations.

his person the worth and the lustre of a high minded integrity. It is delightful to think, that humble life may be just as rich in moral grace, and moral grandeur, as the loftier places of society; that as true a dignity of principle may be earned by him who in homeliest drudgery, plies his conscientious task, as by him who stands entrusted with the fortunes of an empire; that the poorest menial in the land, who can lift a hand unsoiled by the pilferments that are within his reach, may have achieved a victory over

proudest patriot can boast, who has spurned the bribery of courts away from him. It is cheering to know, from the heavenly judge himself, that he who is faithful in the least, is faithful also in much; and that thus, among the labours of the field and of the work-shop, it is possible for the peasant to be as bright in honour as the peer, and have the chivalry of as much truth and virtue to adorn him.

It may appear a very little thing, when you are told to be honest in little matters; when the servant is told to keep her hand from every one article about which there is not an express or understood allowance on the part of her superiors; when the dealer is told to lop off the excesses of that minuter fraudulency, which is so currently prac-temptation, to the full as honourable as the tised in the humble walks of merchandise; when the workman is told to abstain from those petty reservations of the material of his work, for which he is said to have such snug and ample opportunity; and when, without pronouncing on the actual extent of these transgressions, all are told to be faithful in that which is least, else, if there be truth in our text, they incur the guilt of being unfaithful in much. It may be thought, And, as this lesson is not little in respect that because such dishonesties as these are of principle, so neither is it little in respect scarcely noticeable, they are therefore not of influence on the order and well-being of worthy of notice. But it is just in the pro-human society. He who is unjust in the portion of their being unnoticeable by the least, is, in respect of guilt, unjust also in human eye, that it is religious to refrain much. And to reverse this proposition, as it from them. These are the cases in which it is done in the first clause of our text-he will be seen, whether the controul of the who is faithful in that which is least, is, in omniscience of God makes up for the con- respect both of righteous principle and of troul of human observation-in which the actual observation, faithful also in much. sentiment, that thou God seest me, should Who is the man to whom I would most carry a preponderance through all the secret readily confide the whole of my property? places of a man's history-in which, when He who would most disdain to put forth an every earthly check of an earthly morality injurious hand on a single farthing of it. is withdrawn, it should be felt, that the eye Who is the man from whom I would have of God is upon him, and that the judgment the least dread of any unrighteous encroachof God is in reserve for him. To him who ment? He, all the delicacies of whose prinis gifted with a true discernment of these ciple are awakened, when he comes within matters, will it appear, that often, in propor- sight of the limit which separates the region tion to the smallness of the doings, is the of justice from the region of injustice. Who sacredness of that principle which causes is the man whom we shall never find among them to be done with integrity; that honesty, the greater degrees of iniquity? He who in little transactions, bears upon it more of shrinks with sacred abhorrence from the the aspect of holiness, than honesty in great lesser degrees of it. It is a true, though a ones; that the man of deepest sensibility to homely maxim of economy, that if we take the obligations of the law, is he who feels care of our small sums, our great sums will the quickening of moral alarm at its slightest take care of themselves. And, to pass from violations; that, in the morality of grains our own things to the things of others, it is and of scruples, there may be a greater ten-no less true, that if principle should lead us derness of conscience, and a more heaven-all to maintain the care of strictest honesty born sanctity, than in that larger morality over our neighbour's pennies, then will his which flashes broadly and observably upon the world; and that thus, in the faithfulness of the household maid, or of the apprentice boy, there may be the presence of a truer principle than there is in the more conspicuous transactions of human business -what they do, being done, not with eyeservice-what they do, being done unto the Lord.

And here we may remark, that nobleness of condition is not essential as a school for nobleness of character; nor does man require to be high in office, ere he can gather around

pounds lie secure from the grasp of injustice, behind the barrier of a moral impossibility. This lesson, if carried into effect among you, would so strengthen all the ramparts of security between man and man, as to make them utterly impassable; and therefore, while, in the matter of it, it may look, in one view, as one of the least of the commandments, it, in regard both of principle and effect, is, in another view of it, one of the greatest of the commandments. And we therefore conclude with. assuring you, that nothing will spread the principle of this

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