Thus we find in the Pentateuch, in Ezekiel, and in the apostolic writings the representatives of three very different stages of religious enlightenment, all teaching us in effect the same lesson, to remember the recompense that sin never fails to bring upon him who commits it. As we listen to the curses of Deuteronomy on one sin and on another, and then read the language of Ezekiel or St. Paul, we are conscious of a difference in the modes of thought and expression. The thought of the apostle is separated from that of the lawgiver or the prophet of the Old Testament by the new revelation and the sacrifice of Jesus; but yet underneath all differences their judgment on every sinful act or habit remains spiritually the same. They all alike bid us, when we think of our sins, to think also of the inevitable punishment which rises behind them like their shadow; and to bear in mind that the root of the whole matter is the one incontrovertible and never-changing fact of human life that as you sow you must expect to reap--he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. Now, inasmuch as your early years are the seed-time of your life, these stern reminders that if you sow any sin in your soul you will some day reap its curse, that God will judge you every one according to his ways, all this is very appropriate for your consideration. And you are likely to be all the more serious about your present life and its habits, tastes, and purposes if this thought really takes possession of you, that there is in fact a very close analogy between the life of the soul and life around us in the outer world, and that every seed we sow in it grows after its own kind. In the region of animal or vegetable life you see and recognise this law on every side. You trace it sometimes as the law of improvement by culture, sometimes as the law of degeneration. You cultivate and tend a garden or a field, sowing, planting, eradicating, and the growths of flower or fruit improve in proportion to your care; but leave it to itself and the weeds choke it, and the very fruit degenerates; your rose becomes a dog-rose--it reverts, as men say, to a lower type. So exactly is it with your own life; so long as it is grafted into a life higher than your own, so long as good purposes are being sown in it and good habits cultivated, and the bad weeded out and the Spirit of God breathes through it, it is growing nearer to the Divine type; but neglect it, or follow sinful impulse or low taste, and it becomes like the garden of weeds; degeneracy begins at once, it is changing to something worse, it is reverting to a lower type. This is a way of expressing it which is sufficiently familiar to you. But this is only our modern way of looking at those facts of life which were eloquent to men of earlier times as the curse of God. As, then, it is undoubtedly true that-- "Our acts our angels are, for good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk with us still,"