yourself. Adam, under the consciousness of his guilt, was thus moved. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"

"And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."

And from this initial exhibition of the impulse and its failure, the same is true onward through the sacred record, until in Revelation the very madness of this despairing desire is voiced in the cry, as mountains and rocks are apostrophised"Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb."

As to any hope you might have of a successful escape by flight from the pursuing justice of your fellowmen, what will it avail, when you have to do with him who says: "Though they dig into hell thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:

And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them."

The consciousness of guilt-what a millstone on the elasticity of your life! For many another be

sides the Thane of Cawdor has it "murdered sleep." The sense of it drove Judas and many another to self-destruction. To carry such a skeleton around with you-ah me! How it will mar the brightness of life and eat as doth a canker. The whole tendency and influence thereof is to convert you into a suspicious, nervous coward, when otherwise you would be a courageous, free, aggressive soul. Look at the brethren of Joseph, recognizing in their guilty souls the seeming harshness of the latter as an avenging Nemesis for their old time crime. "And they said one to another, we are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us." And again, after the burial of their father,-notwithstanding the whole-hearted assurances of goodwill already so freely granted by Joseph and abundantly attested by kindly deeds-their guilt arose, like Banquo's ghost, to disturb their peace. "And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him."

Its conscious presence has over and over again been such a fire in the bones, burning in the soul like a veritable hell-which by anticipation it was

-that it has driven men to give themselves over to justice rather than endure the awful inner agony.

And you are not only guilty, but the same is intensified and aggravated because of the light of knowledge in the face of which you are what you are. If the Apostle could affirm that those who enjoyed simply the light of nature-the bedimmed relevations of the law written in their hearts— were yet without excuse, how much more, when, in addition, you have the written law of the Lord, the Scriptures of truth, in which "life and immortality are brought to light." And not only have them but you have seen them illustrated in the lives of saintly men and women-the light of God shining round about you in manifold ways. You stand forth, as a sinner in the face of unnumbered blessings, and the fact deepens the fatefulness of the word "guilty" as you hear it in the solemn stillnesses of the soul.

But being guilty what then? The sense or consciousness of guilt, brought home to you by manifold evidence from without and within,is that the end of it? Justice forbids. That is neither according to human law, which may err, nor after the manner of the divine, which cannot. There must follow the condemning words of the judge. Sentence is pronounced and while it may

not be executed immediately, or speedily, as we reckon duration on earth, yet the day of its full visitation draweth nigh. One man is impressed with these great verities and inquires as to how they may be averted-how life may take the place of death. Another, as Solomon says, "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore his heart is fully set in him to do evil."

But now we will consider whether there be any ray of hope shining in the darkness, and encouraging you to believe that either the legal declaration of your guilt may be averted, or, failing in that, that then the sentence may be modified or neutralized. There are various possibilities in this connection, so far as an earthly tribunal is concerned. May they also be entertained in relation to the divine? By one or the other of them, or all combined, the earthly hope may be indulged that you may not be adjudged guilty. Even while self-condemned, but innocent at the bar of public opinion and before the law, there may yet be present the hope and belief that detection may be abidingly averted. The person is continuously on guard to keep the veil of secrecy drawn between the crime and the possible avenger.

But I need not wait to dwell on the futility of such a hope or effort when you have to do-not

with man but with God. "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." But, being detected, there may still remain the hope and possibility of freedom. This stimulates to strenuous effort. There may, for example, exist such social relations and ties between the accused and influential persons in various walks of life, outside of legal circles as well as within, that the force of their influence may suffice to avert the sentence. The same may be true, as it frequently has been, on the score of financial ability—either on the part of the culprit himself or that of his friends. "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty." This condition has served to defeat the ends of justice and has, time and again, furnished a prop to the hope of offenders. So also has political influence furnished the lever by which those really guilty have yet been declared innocent and have gone unwhipt of justice. There is always present the possibility that, in view of the erring frailties of everything human, one may be adjudged guilty-being innocent. And likewise that one may be declared innocent-being guilty.

In such a case conscious innocence on the ce hand, in the gloom of dungeons, may fill the soul