III. It would be by no means uninstructive to inquire +how far these feelings have influenced us in our views and practice with regard to the punishment of crime.+ The last thing we believe in is reformation. You may view this as a judicial consequence of guilt. Terrible as may be the fears of a conscience dreading detection, far more difficulty, far more anguish, far bitterer self-reproach, is in store for the penitent struggling to regain peace and the fair name which he has lost. He carries the past evermore, as it were, branded on his brow, for men to see and avoid. IV. While we rejoice and are grateful to God for His mercy to us, +we should at the same time tremble at our own unworthiness, and ever bear in mind our personal liability to fall into sin.+ In such a spirit should we set about the blessed work of restoration, ever looking on the fallen as our brethren, going to meet them across the gulf which human Pharisaism has placed between them and us, the undetected; as common children of that God whose grace is able to raise them up again, bearing their burdens instead of disclaiming them and letting them sink under their weight, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.--_Dean Alford._ _The Restoration of the Erring._ +I. The Christian view of other men's sins.+--1. _The apostle looks upon sin as if it might be sometimes the result of a surprise._ 2. _As that which has left a burden on the erring spirit._ (1) One burden laid on fault is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag down to fresh sins. (2) The burden of the heart weighing on itself. (3) The burden of a secret, leading a man to tell the tale of his crimes as under the personality of another, as in the old fable of him who breathed his weighty secret to the reeds; to get relief in profuse and general acknowledgment of guilt; evidenced in the commonness of the longing for confession. (4) The burden of an intuitive consciousness of the hidden sins of others' hearts. +II. The Christian power of restoration.+--1. _Restoration is possible._ 2. _By sympathy._ 3. _By forgiveness._ 4. _In the spirit of meekness._ 5. _The motive urging to attempt restoration._--"Considering thyself," etc.--_F. W. Robertson._