The miracles of Jesus - Classical Christian Literature by Athleo.net

192 REPEATED SIN AND
for the words obviously look beyond all present
horizons. The fraction of life left to the healed man
would scarcely give space for the accelerated pain
referred to. The unseen penalties of transgression
are more grievous than the most dismal forms of
bodily suffering. And how much does this imply
The temporal disability was surely enough to affright
the imagination. It was no light burden that had
come to this man, a burden the retrospect of which
must have been saddening indeed. 1 1 is powers had
been sapped in the heyday of his strength.
Shut out
from the best tasks of life, denied the solace c r its
genial relationships, face to face with daily suffering,
the scenes of a lazar house always present to the eye,
what more hideous destiny could befall a misguided
and unhappy mortal And yet the words of Jesus
convey the haunting thought that for the man who
neglects the crises of grace in his life, the unknown
retributions are more terrible than any of which he
has hitherto had experience. Perhaps we do not
always know the worst that may be said of the living
death which is the wages of sin here. The woe it
works is veiled from us. It is hidden by closed doors,
thickly curtained windows, and sacred reservations
put round mourning and shame-stricken households.
It buries itself in hospitals, poorhouses, asylums ;
and
an inviolable etiquette imposes silence. That it
should be so is well for our comfort, and the world
must not be made unduly morbid. The places of
retribution on earth and beneath the earth are sealedup
realms.
Final punishment for one who persists in
sin and fritters away his opportunities is
sharper than
the sharpest penalties of time. A worse thing than