^ In Greek history we read of a man named Ibycus who lived five centuries before the birth of Christ, and was a popular poet in his own generation. While travelling through an unfrequented region near Corinth, he was set upon by a band of robbers and mortally wounded. As he was on the point of expiring he saw a flock of cranes that happened just then to be flying overhead, and in the absence of any human helper, he called aloud with his last breath upon those birds of the air to avenge his cruel death. Not long afterwards there was a great gathering in the theatre of Corinth, which, like all the theatres of ancient Greece, stood open to the sky. Among the crowd sat
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NUMBERS XXXII. 23 435
one of the murderers of Ibycus. The drama was going on, whec suddenly a flock of cranes appeared on the horizon. They drew nearer and nearer until at last they seemed to stop and hover in the air above the heads of the audience. The conscience-stricken murderer, seized with terror, instinctively exclaimed, " Behold the avengers of Ibycus ! " His words were overheard, and he was seized and put on trial. He confessed the guilt of himself and his accomplices, and all of them were sentenced to death.^
^ The ancients said that Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, was slow in her movements, being lame of her feet ; but though she was slow, she never failed to catch her victim, for while he was sleeping she was still pursuing. And they believed that nature herself — the very birds of the air, the very waves of the sea, the very trees of the wood, the very stones of the street — would cry aloud to prevent a crime from being concealed. In Hood's powerful ballad, "The Dream of Eugene Aram," which is founded on an actual case, we have a kind of allegory of this very truth. Eugene Aram had murdered a man and cast his body into the river — " A sluggish water, black as ink, the depth was so extreme." Next morning he visited the place, and this waa what he saw —
I sought the black accursed pool
With a wild misgiving eye; And I saw the Dead in the river-bed,
For the faithless stream was dry !
Upon this he covered the corpse with heaps of leaves ; but now a mighty wind swept through the wood, and once more laid his secret bare before the eyes of the sun.
Then down I cast me on my face.
And first began to weep; For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep! Or land, or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.
^ In the year 1800, France being then at war with us, a Danish vessel, suspected of being in the French service, was captured at Kingston, West Indies. But the charge could not be proved. The sailors of the warship Abergavenny, then at the same station, were amusing themselves with catching sharks. On opening a shark, they found in its maw a pocket-book containing
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bille of lading which proved that the captui-ed vessel belonged to the enemy. The captain when pursued had thrown his pocket- book into the sea, and the shark had devoured it. The captain's sin found him out through the maw of the shark, and his ship became a British prize.^
•^1 There is a coal mine in England where there is a limestone formation continually going on. The water that trickles through the rock is fully charged with lime, and then, as the water drains off, it leaves a slab of pure white limestone ; but as the miners are at work the black coal dust rises, and then falls again on this limestone, and forms a black layer. But during the night when they are not at work, the dust does not fall and there comes a white layer. Then the next day, of course, there is a black layer. And if the men keep the Lord's Day, and do not work, it can be seen, because there is a white layer three times as thick as any other. There is the whole of the Saturday night and there is the whole of the Sunday. The miners call that limestone the " Sunday rock," because you have only to look at that to tell whether they have been at work on Sunday or not. As their work goes on there is the record in the limestone.^
The floods arise — 0 God ! the floods arise, And wash my slain from out their burial sands; 0 hide me from the onslaught of their eyes, The frightful siege of their unhallowed handa'
n.
Sm Itsblf the Detective.
1. The text does not teach simply that every sin will be found out. It is no mere general expression about the discovery of sin. Its meaning is particular and personal It is, " Be sure your sin will find you out." That is a very singular expression. There is the idea of the detective. The sin is following the man — tracking him year after year; and then there comes a moment when it puts its hand on the man's shoulder, and says, " Now I have caught you." Be sure your sin will find you out. It is not a man arresting his sin : it is his sin arresting him. It is not a man discovering his crime: it is his crime discovering him. Here is a very successful sinner, who throws everybody off the track He goes in and out among Christian communities, and ' J. Wells. ' A. G. Brown. * Anna Bonaton.