The sin of the soul is not, as some would seem to think, just a little dust on the knee or elbow that you can strike off in a moment and without any especial damage to you.  Sin has utterly discomfited us; it has ransacked our entire nature; it has ruined us so completely that no human power can ever reconstruct us; but through the darkness of our prison gloom and through the storm there comes a voice from heaven, saying, “I will abundantly pardon.”

Then think of His restraining mercy.  I do not believe that it is possible for any man to tell his capacity for crime until he has been tested.  There have been men who denounced all kinds of frauds, who scorned all mean transactions, who would have had you believe that it was impossible for them ever to be tempted to dishonesty, and yet they may be owning to-day the chief part of the stock in the Credit Mobilier.

There are men who once said they never could be tempted to intemperance.  They had no mercy on the drunkard.  They despised any man who became a victim of strong drink.  Time passed on, and now they are the victims of the bottle, so far gone in their dissipation that it is almost impossible that they ever should be rescued.

So there have been those who were very hard on all kinds of impurity, and who scoffed at unchastity, and who said that it was impossible that they should ever be led astray; but to-night they are in the house whose gates are the gates of hell!  It is a very dangerous thing for a man to make a boast and say, “Such and such a sin I never could be tempted to commit.”

There are ten thousand hands of mercy holding us up; there are ten thousand hands of mercy holding us back, or we would long ago have gone over the precipice, and instead of sitting to-night in a Christian sanctuary, amid the respected and the good, our song would have been that of the drunkard, or we would be “hail fellows well met” with the renegade and the profligate.  Oh, the restraining mercy of God!  Have you never celebrated it?  Have you never rejoiced in it?

Think also of His guiding mercy.  You have sometimes been on a journey, and come to where there were three roads—­one ahead of you, one to the right and one to the left.  It was a lonely place, and you had no one of whom to ask advice.  You took the left-hand road, thinking that was the right one, but before night you found out your mistake, and yet your horse was too exhausted and you were too tired to retrace your steps, and the mistake you made was an irretrievable mistake.

You come on in life, many a time, and find there are three or four or fifty roads, and which one of the fifty to take you do not know.  Let me say that there are forty-nine chances out of fifty that you will take the wrong one, unless God directs you, since it is a great deal easier to do that which is wrong than that which is right, our nature being corrupt and depraved.

Blessed be God, we have a directory!  As a man lost on the mountains takes out his map and sees the right road marked down, and makes up his mind what to do, so the Lord, in His gospel map, has said:  “This is the way, walk ye in it.”  Blessed be God for His guiding mercy!