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A monster, a hideous thing!
The following is from Spurgeon's sermon,
"The Universal Remedy" #834. Isaiah 53:5.
Within each man lies concealed
the deadly cancer of sin.
If you would see that evil which dwells
in every one of us from our very birth
developing itself upon the surface, you
might soon behold it in all its horror!
But perhaps it were better that you
should not gaze upon a scene so polluting.
In the gambling hells, in the haunts where
drunkards congregate, where thieves assemble,
amid oaths and blasphemies, and lewd language,
and lascivious acts- it is there that sin stalks
forth as a full-grown monster.
In the moral and educated natural man, sin
apparently sleeps like a viper coiled up-
a thing in appearance little to be dreaded,
quiet and powerless as a poor worm.
But before long he feels the viper's tooth,
the poisoned fang envenoms all his blood,
and you see the proof of its deadly poison
in overt and abundant sin.
Men become so covered with the visible
blotches of iniquity, that the spiritual eye
can see in their character the leprosy fully
upon them, and all manner of abominations,
worse than the rottenness of the deadliest
of fleshly diseases, constantly exuding
from their souls!
If we could see sin as it appears to the all
discerning eye of God, we should be more
shocked at the sight of sin than by a vision
of hell. In sin itself there is abomination,
and only abomination. Sin is a something
out of joint with the whole system of the
universe. Sin is a plague, a pest full of
dangers to everything that breathes!
Sin degrades and debases us.
Sin, indeed, is hell-
hell in embryo,
hell in essence,
hell kindling,
hell emerging from the shell.
hell is but Sin when it has
manifested and developed
to the full.
Sin is a monster, a hideous thing,
a thing which God will not look upon, and which
pure eyes cannot behold but with the utmost
detestation. A flood of tears is the proper medium
through which a Christian should look at sin.
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