Did men but know how bitter would be the end of transgression, they would at least pause before they plunge into all evil. Seneca said: "Malice drinks half its own poison." The same is true of all evil passions. The madness of men in rebelling against God is beyond a parallel in human history. They delight in iniquity, they roll it as a sweet morsel under their tongues, they risk all for it, and they lose all by it. Their hearts are fully set in them to do evil. Oh! that men would hear the warning words of Richard Baxter: "Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer and the murderer of the world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you; and though it kill your bodies, it shall not be able to kill your souls; and though it bring you to the grave, as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there." James says: "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." (James 1: 15.) Yet no man, without the grace of God, sees the evil of sin till it is too late. Folly is bound up in the soul of man, till God drives it away by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness.

William S. Plumer

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Conscience may lash us, but it cannot replenish a languishing life. Conscience may be God's word and minister to you, telling you of your faults and your follies and your destitution. It may point out, but it will never supply you. Christ must give you new life. Hart has well expressed it: "He to the feeble and the faint, His mighty aid makes known; and when their languid life is spent, supplies it with His own." - J. K. Popham