There is an inevitableness about it all, for life is not lived at a hazard; every path is clearly laid bare from its first step to its last before the eyes of the Lord; the ups and downs which obscure the way for us are all level to Him.[88] Not by chance, therefore, but by the clearest interworking of cause and effect, these fetters of sin grow upon the feet of the sinner, while the ruined soul mourns in the latter days.[89] The reason why Wisdom cries aloud, so urgently, so continually, is that she is uttering eternal truths, laws which hold in the spiritual world as surely as gravitation holds in the natural world; it is that she sees unhappy human beings going astray in the greatness of their folly, dying because they are without the instruction which she offers.[90]
But now, to turn to the large truth which is illustrated here by a particular instance, that our evil actions, forming evil habits, working ill results on us and on others, are themselves the means of our punishment.
"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us."[91]
We do not rightly conceive God or Judgment or Hell until we recognize that in spiritual and moral things there is a binding law, which is no arbitrary decree of God, but the essential constitution of His universe. _He_ does not punish, but sin punishes; _He_ does not make hell, but sinners make it. As our Lord puts it, the terrible thing about all sinning is that one may become involved in an eternal sin.[92] It is by an inherent necessity that this results from a sin against the Holy Spirit within us.
We cannot too frequently, or too solemnly, dwell upon this startling fact. It is a fact established, not by a doubtful text or two, nor by a mere _ipse dixit_ of authority, but by the widest possible observation of life, by a concurrent witness of all teachers and all true religions. No planetary movement, no recurrence of the seasons, no chemical transformation, no physiological growth, no axiom of mathematics, is established on surer or more irrefutable grounds. Sin itself may even be defined, from an induction of facts, as "the act of a human will which, being contrary to the Divine Will, reacts with inevitable evil upon the agent." Sin is a presumptuous attempt on the part of a human will to disturb the irresistible order of the Divine Will, and can only draw down upon itself those lightnings of the Divine power, which otherwise would have flashed through the heavens beautiful and beneficent.
Let us, then, try to impress upon our minds that, not in the one sin of which we have been speaking only, but in all sins alike, certain bands are being woven, certain cords twisted, certain chains forged, which must one day take and hold the sinner with galling stringency.
Every sin is preparing for us a band of shame to be wound about our brows and tightened to the torture-point. There are many gross and generally condemned actions which when they are exposed bring their immediate penalty. To be discovered in dishonourable dealing, to have our hidden enormities brought into the light of day, to forfeit by feeble vices a fair and dignified position, will load a conscience which is not quite callous with a burden of shame that makes life quite intolerable. But there are many sins which do not entail this scornful censure of our fellows, sins with which _they_ have a secret sympathy, for which _they_ cherish an ill-disguised admiration,--the more heroic sins of daring ambition, victorious selfishness, or proud defiance of God. None the less these tolerated iniquities are weaving the inevitable band of shame for the brow: we shall not always be called on only to face our fellows, for we are by our creation the sons of God, in whose image we are made, and eventually we must confront the children of Light, must look straight up into the face of God, with these sins--venial as they were thought--set in the light of His countenance. Then will the guilty spirit burn with an indescribable and unbearable shame,--"To hide my head! To bury my eyes that they may not see the rays of the Eternal Light," will be its cry. May we not say with truth that the shame which comes from the judgment of our fellows is the most tolerable of the bands of shame?