NUMBERS XXXII. 23 437
nobody suspects him. He moves in a good circle of society, and manages so to talk and so to act that no one entertains a suspicion of his being a hypocrite. Yet there is one who has followed the man like his shadow : there is one who has turned with every turning, and kept the track like a bloodhound of keenest scent. It is the man's own sin. It has tracked him everywhere, and at last lays bold of him with a shout of triumph, and says, " Now I have found you out."
^ Hindered by opposing circumstances, counterworked by happy influences, delayed by time, retarded by distance, sin is an influence that works its way towards a man, moving on after him unseen, till it finds him, till it finds him out. In some shape it yet confronts him, and he recognizes it. He and it parted company in boyhood, in youth, a lifetime ago; and he thought it neutralized, dead and buried and forgotten ; but it stiU lives, and wUl rise like a spectre beside him — it will find him out. It may not interfere with affection, with trade, with prosperity ; it may stand beside all these in abeyance. And it may be just through these that it will find him out, as Jacob's did. Even individual sins, like Jacob's or like David's, avenge themselves ; and, much more, a course of sin. Sin finds a man out in the usual recognized penalty; or it finds him out in the fear that it is going to find him out, in the unquiet, foreboding conscience ; or it finds him out in the bitter compunction and sorrow for the wrong he has done, and the loathing of himself when he thinks of it ; or — and this is the way to be dreaded most of all — it will find him out in the hardening of his mind, and the deterioration of his character. For it is vain to think that you can do evil, and reap no consequences from it; that you may commit sin, and have done with it. The hand of the dyer is not more certainly Imbued with the colours in which he works than the soul takes on the complexion of the thoughts in which it indulges.^
^ A man goes on, for years perhaps, and no one ever discovers his particular failings, nor does he know them himself ; till at length he is brought into certain circumstances which bring them out. Hence men turn out so very differently from what was expected ; and we are seldom able to tell beforehand of another, and scarcely ever dare we promise for ourselves, as regards the future. The proverb, for instance, says. Power tries a man ; so do riches, so do various changes of life. We find that, after all. we do not know him, though we have been acquainted with hini for years. We are disappointed, nay, sometimes startled, as if he had almost lost
438 SIN THE DETECTIVE
his identity ; whereas, perchance, it is but the coming to light of sins committed long before we knew him.^
^ George Eliot has taught this lesson more powerfully perhaps than any other writer of modern times. Again and again she shows how a single sin, committed long years ago, not merely bears its appointed fruit, but comes back at last to the author of it laden with these accumulated results, and casts them down at his feet, saying, " These fruits of sin are yours." The poor, shiver- ing soul would like to disown them then ; but he cannot. They are all his. His own iniquities have taken him, and he is holden with the cords of his own sin. He set the stone rolling, and now it has returned upon him. He broke through the hedge of the Divine law, and the serpent that was lurking there has bitten him.^
2. The name that is usually given to this detective power of sin is Conscience. Some sinners are never found out in the world around, they are not openly punished ; but for all that they don't escape. They carry a detective within from whom they might escape if they could tear out their very nature. Conscience finds them out. And how conscience does worry the sinner with remorse ! A fox was once caught in a trap, but in the morning was found only one of his legs. The wise creature when caught concluded that it would be better to limp back to his den with three legs than, having four legs, to perish in pain. He turned upon his leg and gnawed it through. That fox teaches us the exact meaning of remorse ; for the word means to bite backwards, to gnaw oneself. Sin finds the sinner out when conscience devours the soul. That heathen New Zealander understood this, who gave back a shilling he had stolen from the white man, because of the "quarrelling going on inside him," as he said, " between the good man and the bad man."
And now I can recall the time gone by,
The pure fresh sky Of spring, 'neath which we first met, he and I, The smell of rainy fields in early spring. The song of thrushes, and the glimmering Of rain-drenched leaves by sudden sun made bright,