tongue may plainly determine our portion for eternity, so that by our words we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned.

Now we are quite aware, that when an idle word is represented as a sin to be charged against us hereafter, the produced feeling commonly is, that the sin, if it be a sin at all, is too insignificant to be remembered at a moment when the vast things of eternity shall be waiting the allotment of the Judge. And this feeling is, in the first place, to be met by considering the nature of sin, and examining the possibility of its ever being trifling. We only assert what must be borne out by an inward witness from every one among you, when we say that men are disposed to underrate sin, and to measure the offences of man against God by the same standards as the offences of man against man. Just because there may be all possible degrees of criminality in the wrong-doing of beings of the same race the one towards the other, it is inferred that sin, emphatically so called—the wrong-doing of man towards his Maker-may admit every variety of guiltiness, from the enormous, which could scarce be overpunished, to the insignificant, which scarce deserves punishment at all. And it is no part of our business to disprove there being degrees of guiltiness in sin-as though all sins were on a par, and there were no power in one man of being more wicked than another. We readily admit that sins may be compared in regard of criminality, and that, if you think merely of the proportion which one bears to another,

you may justly speak of the great and the small, or arrange a catalogue of what deserves much, and what deserves little.

But along with this admission, and in thorough consistency with it, we would urge that there cannot be a small sin, a sin whose guilt is inconsiderable, or which may be regarded as exposing its perpetrator to none but an insignificant punishment. We argue, that, whilst one sin may differ from another by very large measures, every sin is necessarily great, and deserving great punishment; so that what you count the least, may indeed be far less heinous than some others with which you institute comparison, but must, notwithstanding, be of infinite guilt, and expose those who work it to an infinite retribution.

And it is because sin is an offence against God, that we assert the impossibility of its ever being trivial or inconsiderable in itself. The Creator, at whose word we rose out of nothing, and might again disappear from the universe, has imposed a law on his rational creatures, having either graven it on their consciences, or traced it in external revelation. There cannot be imagined a more thorough dependence than that in which we stand with regard to this Creator, nor a stricter claim than that which he has on our allegiance. And hence his every precept comes to us with a sanction, and invested with a majesty, which make it impossible that we should be guilty of a slight offence against God. For, wheresoever there is sin, there must be infringement of

divine law; and this law, whether you think of the awful dignities of the Being from whom it proceeds, or ponder the relation in which we stand to that Being, is so august, so imperative, so terrible, that to break it in the least point must be to array ourselves against Omnipotence, and therefore Omnipotence against ourselves. It cannot be a small thing to disobey God, though it may be a small thing in which I disobey Him. The guilt of the disobedience should be estimated by the greatness of the Being whom I disobey, rather than by that of the particular in which I disobey. Indeed, I might almost venture to say, that God cannot require a small thing, cannot forbid a small thing. So soon as required, or forbidden, the small becomes great: law gives to it something of the greatness of the lawgiver; the word which spake every thing out of nothing, magnifies in uttering; and where a divine command lights, a vast duty rises.

There is one thing, therefore, to which we may defy a sinner-we may defy him to commit a small sin, a sin that can be punished in less than an eternity, or pardoned through less than Christ's death. Is it sin? then it is not also small. It is not sin, unless it be a transgression of God's law: but, being this, the law must be insignificant, the lawgiver must be insignificant, ere sin can be insignificant. A thought? a word? can these break the divine law? it is admitted that they can: the law itself, as interpreted by its author, declares that they can. And what is it to

break the divine law? I incur its penalties; and these penalties, what are they but divine attributes pledged to their own vindication? Then, had there not been made a propitiation for the sins of humankind, it would avail nothing that I could prove myself innocent in all but a single particular, nothing that this particular, if compared with those in which others had offended, seemed as the "light dust of the balance" to the "everlasting hills." I have rebelled against God; and rebellion against God will be a thing to be overlooked, or recompensed lightly, when man shall cease to be a creature, and God to be Creator. And so long as it is God in whom "we live and move and have our being;" so long as, by the rights of creation, and yet more of redemption, He shall have claim to the consecration of every power, and the employment of every moment, so long will it be possible indeed to forget God, to displease God, to resist God, but impossible to sin a small sin. The eternal majesties of Deity rise up as the measures of sin; his necessary attributes represent its heinousness; his own immensity spreads itself forth as that against which, at every point, every evil action strikes. And, therefore, if there were nothing else to charge against men, enough would be charged to vindicate a sentence of destruction, when idle words were brought in accusation. There might be more heinous things than these words for which to give account. But supposing them the chief, and even the whole of the indictment, they are infractions of a law whose least

penalty must be everlasting death; and, therefore, on every principle of justice, by their words might the accused be condemned.

Now up to this point, we have argued on the supposition that the offence of an idle word is one which may pass for insignificant or venial; and we have strictly confined ourselves to the endeavouring to prove that sin, from its very nature, excludes the inconsiderable. But we desire now to shift our ground. In place of maintaining the justice of a condemnation for words, on the principle that the least sin must be of infinite heinousness, and therefore deserves infinite punishment, we shall deny the smallness of the sin, its relative smallness, its smallness as compared with other misdoings.

When men would urge the inconsiderableness of an "idle word," and then argue that there can be nothing heinous in its utterance, and nothing excellent in its forbearance, we are disposed to think that they make a wrong estimate, and that sins of the tongue, if compared with other sins, should be regarded as aggravated rather than trivial. We remember that David speaks of the tongue as of the best member which he had, and seems to make it his glory as a man that he could articulate the praises of God. And never should it be forgotten that there is no reason whatsoever for regarding language as a human invention, or for supposing that men, if left to themselves, could arrange or employ a system of sounds for communicating their thoughts the one to