Or it may have been a spiritual sin--pride, vanity,
covetousness. Can any man put off these bad habits in a moment, as he
puts off his coat? Those who so fancy, can know very little of human
nature, and have observed their own hearts and their fellow creatures
very carelessly. If you will look at facts, what you will find is this:-
-that all sins and bad habits fill the soul with evil humours, just as a
fever or any other severe disease fills the body; and that, as in the
case of a fever, those evil humours remain after the acute disease is
past, and are but too apt to break out again, to cause relapses, to
torment the poor patient, perhaps to leave his character crippled and
disfigured all his life--certainly to require long and often severe
treatment by the heavenly physician, Christ, the purifier as well as the
redeemer of our sin-sick souls. Heavy, therefore, and bitter and
shameful is the burden which many a man has to bear after he has turned
from self to God, from sin to holiness. He is haunted, as it were, by
the ghosts of his old follies.
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