The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

bribe that he could gather if I would be pleased to conceal at least some of them. “Tell,” he would say, “of my acts; of them I am not ashamed; but do not tell my thoughts and imaginations — of them I must for ever stand ashamed before God.” What, then, sinner, will be your shame when your private lusts, your closet transgressions, your secret crimes shall be broadcasted from God’s throne, published by his own mouth, and with a voice louder than a thousand thunders preached in the ears of an assembled world? What will be your terror and confusion then, when all the deeds you have done shall be published in the face of the sun, in the ears of all mankind. Oh renounce the foolish hope of secrecy, for your sin is recorded this day, and shall one day be published upon the walls of heaven.

      8. II. In the next place, let us notice THE MISERY OF SECRET SINS.

      9. Of all sinners the man who makes a profession of religion, and yet lives in iniquity, is the most miserable. A downright wicked man, who takes a glass in his hand, and says, “I am a drunkard, I am not ashamed of it,” he shall be unutterably miserable in worlds to come, but brief though it is, he has his hour of pleasure. A man who curses and swears, and says, “That is my habit, I am a profane man,” and makes a profession of it, he has, at least, some peace in his soul; but the man who walks with God’s minister, who is united with God’s Church, who comes out before God’s people, and unites with them, and then lives in sin, what a miserable existence he must have of it! Why, he has a worse existence than the mouse that is in the parlour, running out now and then to pick up the crumbs, and then back again to his hole. Such men must run out now and then to sin; and oh! how fearful they are to be discovered! One day, perhaps, their character turns up; with wonderful cunning they manage to conceal and gloss it over; but the next day something else comes, and they live in constant fear, telling lie after lie, to make the last lie appear truthful, adding deception to deception, in order that they may not be discovered.

      Oh! ’tis a tangled web we weave,

      When once we venture to deceive,

      If I must be a wicked man, give me the life of a roistering sinner, who sins before the face of day; but, if I must sin, let me not act as a hypocrite and a coward; let me not profess to be God’s, and spend my life for the devil. That way of cheating the devil is a thing which every honest sinner will be ashamed of. He will say, “Now, if I do serve my master I will serve him out and out, I will have no sham about it; if I make a profession, I will carry it out; but if I do not, if I live in sin, I am not going to gloss it over by deception and hypocrisy.” One thing which has hamstrung the church, and cut her very sinews in two, has been this most damnable hypocrisy. Oh! in how many places have we men whom you might praise to the very skies, if you could believe their words, but whom you might cast into the nethermost pit if you could see their secret actions. God forgive any of you who are acting like this! I had almost said, I can scarcely forgive you. I can forgive the man who riots openly, and makes no profession of being better, but the man who fawns, and deceives, and pretends, and prays, and then lives in sin, that man I hate, I cannot bear him, I abhor him from my very soul. If he will turn from his ways, I will love him, but in his hypocrisy he is to me the most loathsome of all creatures. It is said the toad wears a jewel in her head, but this man has none, but bears filthiness about him, while he pretends to be in love with righteousness. A mere profession, my hearers, is only painted pageantry to go to hell in; it is like the plumes upon the hearse and the trappings upon the black horses which drag men to their graves, the funeral array of dead souls. Take heed above everything of a waxen profession that will not stand the sun; take care of a life that needs to have two faces to carry it out; be one thing, or else the other. If you make up your mind to serve Satan, do not pretend to serve God; and if you serve God, serve him with all your heart. “No man can serve two masters”; do not try it, do not endeavour to do it, for no life will be more miserable than that. Above all, beware of committing acts which it will be necessary to conceal. There is a singular poem by Hood, {a} called “The Dream of Eugene Aram” — a most remarkable piece it is indeed, illustrating the point on which I am now dwelling. Aram has murdered a man and cast his body into the river — “a sluggish water, black as ink, the depth was so extreme.” The next morning he visited the scene of his guilt —

      And sought the black accursed pool,

      With a wild misgiving eye;

      And he saw the dead in the river bed,

      For the faithless stream was dry.

      Next he covered the corpse with heaps of leaves, but a mighty wind swept through the wood and left the secret bare before the sun —

      Then down I cast me on my face,

      And first began to weep,

      For I knew my secret then was one

      That earth refused to keep;

      On land or sea though it should be

      Ten thousand fathoms deep.

      In plaintive notes he prophesies his own discovery. He buried his victim in a cave, and trod him down with stones, but when years had run their weary course the foul deed was discovered and the murderer put to death.

      10. Guilt is a “grim chamberlain,” even when his fingers are not bloody red. Secret sins bring fevered eyes and sleepless nights, until men burn out their consciences, and become in very deed ripe for the pit. Hypocrisy is a hard game to play at, for it is one deceiver against many observers; and for certain it is a miserable trade, which will earn at last, as its certain climax, a tremendous bankruptcy. Ah! you who have sinned without discovery, “Be sure your sin will find you out”; and it may find you out before long. Sin, like murder, will come out; men will even tell tales about themselves in their dreams. God has sometimes made men so pricked in their consciences that they have been obliged to come forth and confess the story. Secret sinner! if you want the foretaste of damnation upon earth, continue in your secret sin; for no man is more miserable than he who sins secretly, and yet tries to preserve a character. That stag, followed by the hungry hounds, with open mouths, is far more happy than the man who is followed by his sins. That bird, taken in the fowler’s net, and labouring to escape, is far more happy than he who has weaved around himself a web of deception, and labours to escape from it day by day by making the toils more strenuous and the web more strong. Oh! the misery of secret sins! Truly, one may pray, “Cleanse me from secret faults.”

      11. III. But now, next, the guilt THE SOLEMN GUILT OF SECRET SIN.

      12. Now, John, you do not think there is any evil in a thing unless someone sees it, do you? You feel that it is a very great sin if your master finds out that you are robbing the until — but there is no sin if he should not discover it — none at all. And you, sir, you fancy it to be a very great sin to play a trick in trade, in case you should be discovered and brought before the court; but to play a trick and never be discovered, that is all fair — do not say a word about it Mr. Spurgeon, it is all business; you must not touch business; tricks that are not discovered, of course you are not to find fault with them. The common measure of sin is the notoriety of it. But I do not believe in that. A sin is a sin, whether done in private or before the wide world. It is extraordinary how men will measure guilt. A railway employee puts up a wrong signal, there is an accident; the man is tried, and severely reprimanded. The day before he put up the wrong signal, but there was no accident, and therefore no one accused him for his neglect. But it was just the same, accident or no accident, the accident did not make the guilt, it was the deed which made the guilt, not the notoriety nor yet the consequence of it. It was his business to have taken care, and he was as guilty the first time as he was the second, for he negligently hazarded the lives of men. Do not measure sin by what other people say about it; but measure sin by what God says about it, and what your own conscience says about it.

      13. Now, I hold that secret sin, if anything, is the worst of sin; because secret sin implies that the man who commits it has Atheism in his heart. You will ask how that can be. I reply, he may be a professing Christian, but I shall tell him to his face that he is a practical Atheist if he labours to keep up a respectable profession before man, and then secretly