or next week, or next year, but the time of reaping will assuredly come, and when the reaping time comes you will moan bitterly; then you will like to change places with those Christians whom you despise now. When the reaping time comes, you would give a good deal if you could exchange places with the humblest-looking Christian. I suppose that Cain would give a good deal to exchange places with Abel to-night. Do you think Pilate would not like to change places with Elijah, with Obadiah, or Peter to-night ? Don't you think the Emperor Nero would like to exchange places now with Paul? Paul is reaping what he sowed, and so is Nero. All through Scripture you can see the proof of this text. Don't you think that the rich man at whose door the beggar Lazarus lay would like to exchange places with that poor Christian now? Bear in mind that you may look upon Christians with contempt, but the time is coming when you will give anything to exchange places with the meanest Christian that walks the streets of Chicago.

I used to believe twenty years ago in this text, but I believe it more now than ever I did. The longer I live the more I become convinced of its awful truth. You know I used to live in Chicago, and I used to go from house to house among the poor, and in going among the poor I gained no little experience of the rich people. In visiting the poor I became acquainted with a good many rich families, and there is scarcely a week passes now but I hear of rich families who have gone down to ruin. Just this afternoon I heard of a family who, twenty years ago, occupied a position among the best. They had a beautiful daughter, who could have adorned any station, and a lovely home, and I heard to-day that they had gone down to ruin. They looked upon Christianity with scorn and contempt. The father brought the children up to treat all religion with contempt, and his sons have gone down to their graves drunkards, and his daughter has died of a broken heart. Yes, a man who sows tares must reap them, and sometimes the harvest is a whirlwind.

Now, just let us divide that text up-not that I want to preach under different heads, but just for the sake of greater clearness. When a man sows he expects to reap. This truth must be admitted first. A farmer that planted grain and never reaped his fields, you would say had gone clear mad. No man sows that doesn't expect to reap. That is just what he does expect to do. The next point; A man always expects to reap more than he sowed. If he sows a handful of grain, he expects to get from that handful a bushel, and if he sows a bushel he expects a harvest of five hundred bushels. And just so it is in spiritual

matters. If a man scatters handfuls of tares in spiritual things, his spiritual harvest will be bushels of tares, and not wheat. Whatever he sows he shall reap; just that and nothing more; and if he sows the wind he must reap the whirlwind. A man must expect a harvest of just the kind that his seed is; and this great law is even more true of spiritual growth than of natural growth. If a man is bad and corrupt in his thoughts, you can tell precisely what his deeds will be.

If a man is profane and blasphemous, look to his children to be the same; if a father is a lying man, his children will grow up to deceive him just as he deceived others. A bad boy is too often the living penalty of the sins of his parents; they have sown and watered, and now he is reaping the punishment. Another point: if a man sows, he must reap the fruit, no matter how ignorant he may claim to be, or really be, of the nature of the seed. A plea of ignorance won't do. You sow tares and You may

think it wheat, but nothing but tares will spring up. call it wheat, or rye, or grain of whatever name you please, but you get nothing but weeds and tares. You must look to what kind of seed you are sowing, for neither ignorance nor any other excuse can make tares bring forth wheat. And now, see how true that is, in regard not only to individuals but nations. Nations are only collections of individuals, and what is true of the part in regard to character is always true of the whole. In this country our forefathers planted slavery in the face of an open Bible, and didn't we have to reap? When the harvest came nearly half a million of your young men were buried, many of them in a nameless grave. Didn't God make this nation weep in the hour of gathering the harvest, when we had to give up our young men, both North and South, to death; and every house hold almost had an empty chair, and blood, blood, blood, flowed like water for four long years? Ah, our nation sowed, and how in tares and groans she had to reap!

Then look at that king in Egypt. He made a decree that all the male infants should be put to death; and to death they were put, with all the horrors that hatred and jealousy could invent. It was terrible. Well, now, I suppose some people think it strange that God didn't punish Egypt with swift destruction. But look, the punishment only tarried. The mill of God grinds slow, but it grinds exceedingly small; in eighty years cast your eye on that miserable land. God's vengeance at length came down, and ruin along with it. In every house in Egypt the first-born was slain, from the palace to the lowest hovel. There still lived a God, and this immutable law of His had still to be executed; they had to reap just what they had sown. Then,

sometimes the mill is not so slow. Sometimes the punishment comes rapidly-like lightning. No sooner did the voice ascend that Cain had killed his brother, than God came down and put a mark upon his forehead. Scarcely had Judas betrayed his master than he came back with his thirty pieces of silver, and, torn with remorse, threw them down before the priests, and went out and hung himself. You will find that very often judgment and destruction come very sudden-come like a flash from the throne of God. I remember, in the north of England, a prominent citizen told me a sad case that happened there in the town of Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was about a young boy. He was very young, but he said he was too young to go to a Sunday school. He was an only child. The father and mother thought everything of him, and did all they could for him. But he fell

into bad ways; he took up with evil characters, and finally got to running with thieves. He didn't let his parents know about it. One night they got him to break into a saloon-what the people there call a public-house. They stood outside while he entered the house and broke into the till. He was caught, and in one short week he was tried, convicted, and sent for ten years to Van Dieman's Land. His term of servitude expired, and he returned to his native land. He came to the town where his mother and father used to live, and soon stood at the door of his old home. He had been gone ten years, and what a change he found there. My friends, ten years seem a short time, but look back over the period of ten years in your own lives, and see how many changes have taken place. He went to his old home and knocked, but a stranger came to the door and stared him in the face. "No, there's no such person lives here, and where your parents are I don't know," was the only welcome he received. Then he turned through the gate, and went down the street, asking even the children that he met about his folks, where they were living, and if they were well. But everybody looked blank. Ten years had rolled by, and though that seemed perhaps a short time, how many changes had taken place! There, where he was born and brought up, he was now an alien, and unknown even in his old haunts. But at last he found a couple of townsmen that remembered his father and mother, and they told him the old house had been deserted long years ago; that he had been gone but a few months before his father was confined to his house, and very soon after died brokenhearted; and that his mother had gone out of her mind. He went to the mad-house where his mother was, and went up to her and said: "Mother, mother, don't you know me? I am your son !" But she raved, and slapped him on the face, and shrieked, "You are not my boy!" and then raved again and

tore her hair. He left the asylum more dead than alive, so completely broken-hearted that he died in a few months. Yes, the fruit was long growing, but at last it ripened to the harvest like a whirlwind, and vengeance made quick work of it. death harvest was reaped.

The

But bear in mind what I have said to-night, and be not doubters, even if the harvest is slow. Let me read you the passage: Because sentence against their evil deeds is not executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men are fully set in to do them evil. Though a sinner do evil a hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before Him; but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall He prolong his days which are as a shadow, because he feareth not before God."

My friends, if you sow in the flesh you will reap disappointment, you will reap gloom, despair, and remorse: the harvest will be death and hell-that will be the end; but if you sow of the Spirit, you will reap peace, joy, happiness, life everlasting; for God has said it. There are a great many things in this world that we are not sure of-we are sure of nothing, I may say. I am not sure that I will finish this sermon; I am not sure that I may go home to-night; we cannot say, positively, that the sun will rise to-morrow morning. Yes, my friends, there are a great many things that we are not sure of; but there is one thing we are sure of, for God has said it. You can be sure that your sins will find you out. If we don't judge ourselves and confess our sins they will find us "He that covereth his sin shall not prosper;" that is God's

out.

decree.

Now I have been censured by many for advising two men who had committed crime to go back and confess their sin. One man the other day was cursing me for doing so. "A pretty kind of religion this is," he said; but, my friends, if a man has gone into a court and publicly perjured himself, he cannot serve God till he publicly confesses it. If he has sinned in public he must confess his sin in public. These men have gone back and written letters full of encouragement. One of them says, "perhaps I will go to the pententiary for three years, but what is that in comparison to the burden I would have carried had I not confessed." Now bear in mind that if you cover your sin you shall not prosper; you may keep it secret but it will eventually come out. Look at the sons of Jacob! Look at them when they took away their brother, and after they had delivered him into slavery, see them coming back. How much they must have suffered with their secret during those twenty years.

What misery they must have endured as they looked during all these years at their old father sorrowing for his son Joseph. They knew the boy had not been killed-they knew he was in slavery. For twenty years the sin was covered up, but at last it came back upon them. God had in the meantime been doing everything for Joseph, he had raised him nearly to the throne of Egypt. A famine struck the land of the father, and the old man sent his sons down to Egypt to get corn. God was at work. He was making these men bring their own sin home to themselves. Their conscience smote them and they confessed in the presence of Joseph that their sin had found them out. Twenty years after it was committed that sin was resurrected and with it they were brought face to face. My friends, be sure at once that your sin will find you out. God has said it, and if He says a thing He means it. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper," I can imagine some one saying to Absalom when he started out to fight his father, "you shouldn't do this; you are committing a sin, and it will find you out." I can see that young friend looking down upon that man with scorn and contempt. The idea of his sins ever finding him out, ever coming back upon him. He probably would have said "that man's talking for effect," like a good many say of me. You will hear some people say, well, now, any man who knows anything about education knows well enough that Moody is only preaching for effect." If a man tells me I am preaching for effect, I say, "Amen, Amen." That's what I am trying to do; what does a man preach for if it is not for effect. I am trying to create an effect and so wake you up to your condition, and if you don't wake up the reaping time will come upon you, the whirlwind of troubles and sorrows will rush over your defenceless head and then you will reap what you have sown in years gone by.

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But let me say that if you are willing to confess your sins-I don't care what the sin may be-God is willing and ready to take it away. As I have said, there has been a good deal of talk about my interfering with those prisoners lately. Some one has said in speaking about that man in Ohio, “Well, that is a queer kind of Christianity, to send a man away back to the penitentiary to suffer." Let me say here that that young man has said in his last letter: "I think I am happier than you are, Mr. Moody; God is helping me to bear the burden; God is answering my prayers." My friends, it was a great deal better for that man to confess his crime than to try to hide it away. If a man commits a crime he should suffer the penalty. I must suffer the penalty if I break my arm in fighting. The man with whom I fought may forgive me for fighting with him, but