These other lies, like bubbles, sometimes burst. The first of them, about the pleasures, generally bursts as soon as the thing is done. The others about the pains and the criminality often disappear when pricked by some thought of God and contact with Him. But the repertory of the. deceiver is not empty yet. And she can turn her hand and bring out another set of lies, in order to retain her dominion. For the sin that said to you before you did it: There is no harm in it; you do not need to do it again; it is only just once and it will be done with,' says to you after you have done it, when you begin to feel that it was wrong, and try to shake off its guilt and power: You have done it now! You never can get away any more. The thing is past, and neither in regard to its consequences nor in regard to its power will you ever escape from it. What you have written you have written. You are mine!' And so she lays her iron claw upon the man and holds him. Some of us put that into a philosophical principle, and say that in,this great system of rigid interlocking of cause and effect, the idea of forgiveness and of a new beginning of life is impossible and absurd.) Some of us that cannot talk in that strain, yet know what it is to have to say: There is no hope! I have loved evil, and after it I must yet go.'
So sin lies to us just as she lied before. And I have to come now with the message that, of all her falsehoods none is more false and fatal than the falsehood that a sinful man cannot turn from his evil; conquer all his transgression; begin a new happy, clean life; and be sure of forgiveness from His Father in Heaven. Jesus Christ, the faithful and true witness,' has died that it may be possible to bring to us pure and true promises of lasting and satisfying blessedness, and to avert from each of us, if we will trust in the power of His blood, the worst and penal consequences of our transgression, and if we will trust in the power of His imparted Spirit, to make our future altogether unlike out' past, and deliver us from the habit and entail of our sins. So, dear friend, these two stand before you. On one side the Sorceress with a smile on her lips, a lie on her tongue, and a knife in her sleeve. Do not go into her house. The dead are there; and her guests are in the depths of Hell.' On the other side stands Jesus Christ who has died to redeem our souls from' her deceit and violence Band trusting in whom we may all say: My soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken and I am escaped.'
