"Again: If thought be the spring of action, action is also the spring of thought. If it be true that, 'as a man thinks, he is,' so it is true that as he is, he thinks. Thought is by turns cause and effect. If a man's sins are the result of his evil thoughts, so his evil and erroneous thoughts are sometimes the result of his sins. He cannot long continue to think right if he act wrong. After breaking the Sabbath awhile, he ceases to think of it as a holy day. After committing murder, he ceases to regard life as sacred. Violating human law, it becomes a terror instead of a protection. Defying the Divine law, he soon denies its authority. Sin distorts his views, as well as his life. The truths of religion lose their clearness to his mind with their power to influence his action. Doubts, scepticism, infidelity, find an open door, and an easy road, to his heart. If a man would keep fast hold of his Christian faith, let him take care to order his actions, as far as possible, in conformity to its precepts. But, on the other hand, let him give free rein to his appetites and ambitions,--yea, even to the commission of absolute crime,--if he wishes to become a mocker and an infidel, without love of God or man, without correct views of time or clear ones of eternity. For, to all these things, he will be sure to be holden with the cords of his sins. "Finally; All men love liberty. But sin, though it may seem, at first, to be the wildest liberty, soon proves to be the narrowest bondage. The sinner is the slave of appetites, of habits, of thoughts, that are hard task-masters; and the wages of which are every kind of death. For there are many kinds,--social, political, moral, before the final, everlasting death;--and one, or all, of these, he is sure to taste, as the reward of his faithful service of Satan. His health is undermined, or his reputation destroyed; his fortune is dissipated, or his gold corroded in the using; he is shaken with the terrors of conscience, or hardened into the semblance of stone; he is without adequate consolation in the day of trouble, and without strengthening hope in the day of death; but his slavery is abject and absolute. He neither will nor can escape. He is holden with the cords of his sins. "Thus you will see, beloved, that our text has a word of solemn warning for the present, as well as for the future. The holding of sin is to be dreaded in life, not less than at death. One sin holds fast to another. Single sins twist together into the strong cord of habitual sin. The sinful act draws after it evil thoughts and loose opinions. Sin is a continual, daily bondage, as well as a final retribution.