Think of this, ye earnest and faithful laborers in the vineyard of the Lord.  There is not a child that you allure into your Sabbath Schools, and your Mission Schools, that is not fearfully and wonderfully made; and whose marvellous powers you are doing much to render to their possessor a blessing, instead of a curse.  When Sir Humphrey Davy, in answer to an inquiry that had been made of him respecting the number and series of his discoveries in chemistry, had gone through with the list, he added:  “But the greatest of my discoveries is Michael Faraday.”  This Michael Faraday was a poor boy employed in the menial services of the laboratory where Davy made those wonderful discoveries by which he revolutionized the science of chemistry, and whose chemical genius he detected, elicited, and encouraged, until he finally took the place of his teacher and patron, and acquired a name that is now one of the influences of England.  Well might he say:  “My greatest discovery was when I detected the wonderful powers of Michael Faraday.”  And never will you make a greater and more beneficent discovery, than when, under the thick scurf of pauperism and vice, you detect the human soul that is fearfully and wonderfully made; than when you elicit its powers of self-consciousness and of memory, and, instrumentally, dedicate them to the service of Christ and the Church.

2.  In the second place, we see from the subject, that thoughtlessness in sin will never excuse sin.  There are degrees in sin.  A deliberate, self-conscious act of sin is the most intense form of moral evil.  When a man has an active conscience; when he distinctly thinks over the nature of the transgression which he is tempted to commit; when he sees clearly that it is a direct violation of a command of God which he is about to engage in; when he says, “I know that this is positively forbidden by my Maker and Judge, but I will do it,”—­we have an instance of the most heaven-daring sin.  This is deliberate and wilful transgression.  The servant knows his lord’s will and does it not, and he shall be beaten with “many stripes,” says Christ.

But, such sin as this is not the usual form.  Most of human transgressions are not accompanied with such a distinct apprehension, and such a deliberate determination.  The sin of ignorance and thoughtlessness is the species which is most common.  Men, generally, do not first think of what they are about to do, and then proceed to do it; but they first proceed to do it, and then think nothing at all about it.  But, thoughtlessness will not excuse sin; though, it is a somewhat less extreme form of it, than deliberate transgression.  Under the Levitical law, the sin of ignorance, as it was called, was to be expiated by a somewhat different sacrifice from that offered for the wilful and deliberate sin; but it must be expiated.  A victim must be offered for it.  It was guilt before God, and needed atonement.  Our Lord, in His prayer for His murderers, said, “Father