Finally, the worst chain forged in the furnace of sin is Remorse: for no one can guarantee to the sinner an eternal insensibility; rather it seems quite unavoidable that some day he must awake, and standing shamed before the eyes of his Maker, stripped of all his possessions and hopelessly diseased in soul, must recognize clearly what might have been and now cannot be. Memory will be busy. "Ah! that cursed memory!" he cries. It brings back all the gentle pleadings of his mother in that pure home long ago; it brings back all his father's counsels; it brings back the words which were spoken from the pulpit, and all the conversations with godly friends. He remembers how he wavered--"Shall it be the strait and hallowed road, or shall it be the broad road of destruction?" He remembers all the pleas and counterpleas, and how with open eyes he chose the way which, as he saw, went down to death. And now? Now it is irrevocable. He said he would take his luck, and he has taken it. He said God would not punish a poor creature like him. God does not punish him. No, there is God making level all his paths now as of old. This punishment is not God's; it is his own. _His own iniquities have taken the wicked; he is held with the cords of his sin._ Here then is the plain, stern truth,--a law, not of Nature only, but of the Universe. As you look into a fact so solemn, so awful; as the cadence of the chapter closes, do you not seem to perceive with a new clearness how men needed One who could take away the sins of the world, One who could break those cruel bonds which men have made for themselves? FOOTNOTES: [72] Prov. xiv. 12. [73] Prov. v. 8. [74] The Laureate has touched with stern satire on this debased modern Realism:-- "Author, atheist, essayist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part, Paint the mortal shame of Nature with the living hues of Art. Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare, Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare! Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer, Send the drain into the fountain lest the stream should issue pure. Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, Forward, forward,--aye and backward, downward too into the abysm!" --_The new Locksley Hall._ [75] Prov. ix. 17. [76] Prov. vi. 25. [77] Prov. vii. 16, 17. [78] Prov. v. 15-19. [79] _Paradise Lost._ [80] Prov. vi. 27, 28. [81] Prov. v. 9. [82] Prov. vi. 33. [83] Prov. vi. 34, 35. [84] Prov. v. 10. [85] Prov. vi. 26. [86] Prov. v. 11. [87] Prov. v. 12-14. [88] Prov. v. 21.