God will not allow sin to sneak out of the world. God will not allow it merely to resign and quit. This shall not be a case that goes by default because no one appears against it. God will arraign it, handcuff it, try it, bring against it the verdict of all the good, and then gibbet it so high up that if one half of the gibbet stood on Mount Washington and the other on the Himalaya, it would not be any more conspicuous. About fifteen years ago we had in this country a most illustrious instance of how God lets a man go on in iniquity, so that at the close of the career his overthrow may be the more impressive, full of warning and climacteric. First, an honest chairmaker, then an alderman, then a member of congress, then a supervisor of a city, then school commissioner, then state senator, then commissioner of public works--on and up, stealing thousands of dollars here and thousands of dollars there, until the malfeasance in office overtopped anything the world had ever seen--making the new Court House in New York a monument of municipal crime, and rushing the debt of the city from thirty-six million dollars to ninety-seven millions. Now, he is at the top of millionairedom. Country-seat terraced and arbored and parterred clear to the water's brink. Horses enough to stock a king's equerry. Grooms and postilions in full rig. Wine cellars enough to make a whole legislature drunk. New York finances and New York politics in his vest pocket. He winked, and men in high place fell. He lifted his little finger, and ignoramuses took important office. He whispered, and in Albany and Washington they said it thundered. Wider and mightier and more baleful his influence, until it seemed as if Pandemonium was to be adjourned to this world, and in the Satanic realm there was to be a change of administration, and Apollyon, who had held dominion so long, should have a successful competitor.