There is nothing in this world valuable enough to recompense such a loss, or balance the misery of a tormenting conscience. If you violate it for the sake of a gratification of the body it will remember the injury many years after. Gen. 42:21; Job 13:26. It will not only retain the memory of what you did, but it will accuse you for it. Matt. 27:4. It will not fear to tell you that plainly, which others dare not whisper. It will not only accuse, but it will also condemn you for what you have done. This condemning voice of conscience is a terrible voice. You may see the horror of it in Cain, the vigor of it in Judas, the doleful effects of it in Saphira. It will produce shame, fear, and despair, if God give not repentance to life. The shame it works will so confound you, that you will not be able to look up. Job. 31:14; Psa. 1:5. The fear it works will make you wish for a hole in the rock to hide you. Isa. 2:9, 10, 15, 19. And its despair is a death pang. -------- "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."--Is. 1:18. -------- Young man, consider the nature of your present actions; they are seeds sown for eternity, and will spring up again in suitable effects, rewards and punishments, when you that did them are turned to dust. What a man sows, that shall he reap. Gal. 6:7. And as sure as the harvest follows the seedtime, so shall shame, fear, and horror follow sin. Dan. 12:2. What Zeuxis, the famous painter, said of his work, may much more truly be said of ours: "I paint for eternity." Ah! how bitter will these things be in the day of reckoning, which were pleasant in the acting! It is true our actions, physically considered, are transient. How soon is a word or action spoken or done, and there is an end of it! But morally considered, they are permanent, being entered upon God's book of action. -------- I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.--Isa. 44:22. -------- Let me illustrate: Some time ago a young man, son of a nobleman of Germany, came to our home poorly clad, without money, without friends, realizing to some extent the depth to which he had fallen, filled with remorse on account of disgrace he had brought upon himself and his family, and like the prodigal in the parable he said, "I will arise and go to my father." He left our home for his home in New Orleans, La. After his arrival there we received the following letter: