hand of evil, it is also the dexterous hand of virtue.

Nor is there even among the vicious any such deterrent to vice as this very law of descent. The last tie to be broken is that which binds our actions to the fortunes of a child. And the child itself, who endures this hard part of the law, we may not hastily judge. We have not the complete range of its fortunes. If motives press downward with great weight, they beget by this very fact at least some reaction upward. The moral consequences are always in the moral problem and flow out of it. As is the condition so are the responsibilities. The highest positions have their supreme dangers, and the lowest their profound compensations. If the fortunes of a parent betray a son, his misfortunes sometimes save a son. Our judgments are largely eye-judgments, and do not fathom the subject.

But abating not the evil, the inquiry still remains: Shall sin be defended from its evils, and rid of its own entail? What is it that shall avail against sin, fittingly expose it, and rebuke it, but its own fearful consequences? Is sin to be repressed like an infectious disease by a quarantine? In fact, is any such quarantine possible? The moral life lies between man and man, father and son. There it is generated; there it discloses its character; there its results follow on. If virtue is to have its own, vice must have its own also. Men who are constantly making and magnifying eternal and unchangeable laws, have, after all, but a feeble idea of their scope. The supernatural, the divine truths, and the Divine Spirit, at work regeneratively under physical and moral