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sin
Spurgeon, “The Smoke of Their Torments” No. 602
See the blackness of your sin by the light of hell's fire!
Hell is the true harvest of the sowing of iniquity.
Come, lost sinner, I charge you to look at hell--
Hell is what sin brings forth.
Hell is the full-grown child.
You have dandled your sin.
You have kissed and fondled it.
But see what sin comes to.
Hell is but sin full-grown, that is all.
You played with that young lion; see how it roars and how
it tears in pieces now that it has come to its strength.
Did you not smile at the azure scales of the serpent?
See its poison; see to what its stings have brought those
who have never looked to the brazen serpent for healing.
Do you account of sin as a peccadillo, a flaw
scarcely to be noticed, a mere joke, a piece of fun?
But see the tree which springs from it.
There is no joke there- no fun in hell.
You did not know that sin was so evil.
Some of you will never know how evil it is until the
sweetness of honey has passed from your mouth,
and the bitterness of death preys at your vitals.
You will count sin harmless until you
are hopelessly stricken with its sting!
My God, from this day forward help me to see through the
thin curtain which covers up sin, and whenever Satan tells
me that such-and-such a thing is for my pleasure, let me
recollect the pain of that penalty wrapped up in it. When
he tells me that such a thing is for my profit, let me know
that it can never profit me to gain the whole world and lose
my own soul. Let me feel it is no sport to sin, for only a
madman would scatter firebrands and death, and say it is sport.
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