How often when we are in trouble or anxiety do we go everywhere to get comfort, before we go to God's word? When a young lad falls into wild ways, and gets into trouble by his own folly, then to whom does he go for comfort? Too often, to other wild lads like himself, or to foolish and wicked women, who will flatter him, and try to make him easy in his sins, and say to him as the false prophets said to Ahab, "Go on and prosper--why be afraid? Why should you not enjoy yourself? Never mind what your father and mother say, never mind what the parson says. You will do well enough. All will come right somehow. Come and drink, and drive away sorrow." And all the while the poor lad gets no comfort from these false friends. He likes to listen to them, because they flatter him up in his sins; but all the while his heart is heavy. Like Ahab, he has a secret fear that all will _not_ come right; he feels that he will _not_ do well enough; and he knows that there remaineth yet a prophet of the Lord, who will not prophesy good of him but evil--and that is the Bible, and the prayer-book, and the sermon he hears at church--and therefore he hates them. And so, many a time he will not go to church for fear of hearing there that he is wrong, perhaps something in the sermon, which hits him hard, and makes him ashamed of himself, and angry with the preacher. So for fear of hearing the truth, and having his sins set before his face, he stays away from church, and passes his Sundays like a heathen, because he has no mind to repent and mend, and be a good Christian. Foolish fellow! As if he could escape God's judgment by shutting his ears to it. As well try to stop the thunder from rolling in the sky, by stopping his ears to that! The thunder is there, whether he choose to hear it or not. And whether he comes to church or not, God's law stands sure, that the wages of sin is death. Does the man fancy that God's law is shut up within the church walls, and that so he can keep clear of it by staying away from church? My friends, God's law is over the whole country, and over every cottage and field in it--about our path and about our bed, and spying out all our ways. The darkness is no darkness to God. God's judgments are in all the earth; and whether or not we choose to find them out, they will find us out just the same, as they found out Ahab, when his cup was full, and his time was come. How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, thinks he shall escape God's judgments by going across the sea; but he finds himself mistaken! He finds that the wages of sin are misery and shame and ruin, in Australia just as much as in England, and that all the gold in the diggings cannot redeem his soul, or prevent his being an unhappy self- condemned man if he does wrong.