+1. Ignorance.+ There are many so uninterested in moral and spiritual things; they have grown up surrounded by such evil examples, that they have no consciousness of the foulness of their vices, any more than a peasant has of the ungracefulness of his manners. This cause operates among the lower classes to an extent scarcely conceivable by the cultured and refined. +2. Habit.+ Many an open and shameless sinner, at the outset of his career, when he was first betrayed into transgression, was ashamed almost to walk through the street, and imagined that every one whom he met had heard of, and despised him for, his offence. But the offence was repeated; it became a habit; and in proportion as it has done so, has the offender's sense of shame died out of him. He thinks as little of it as a soldier does of his uniform, which when it was first put on caused him to think that all eyes were fixed upon him. +3. A desire to silence conscience.+ The effrontery is often assumed, just as the rustic traveller when near a churchyard whistles, not because he is courageous, but to keep his courage up. Conscience reproaches and warns, and the sinner seeks to silence it by greater desperation in wickedness. +4. A seared conscience.+ In the course just named the sinner too often succeeds. Conscience, defied and outraged, desists from her useless efforts, and gives herself over to an insensible lethargy; there will come an hour of terrible awakening; but meanwhile she is blind, deaf, dumb, and the sinner perpetrates the most abominable iniquities without a blush.[1] +5. Infidelity.+ The sinner has succeeded at last in persuading himself that what he wishes were true is true, and that there is no God, and, consequently, no day of judgment and no hell. As soon as men have cast off fear of God, it is easy for them to cast off fear of men. The ordinary fruit of infidelity is vice. What but prudence is left to restrain the infidel from partaking in the pleasures of sin? And how weak prudence is in any real contest with passion! +II.+ THE CONSEQUENCES OF SHAMELESSNESS IN SIN.