formed it, or it would not be a sin; and when we know all this about it, to call it little is, in reality, to express the extremest contempt for morality. Moreover, the phrase "little sins" has a demoralising influence upon all thoughtless persons in whose presence it is used. They think to themselves, if the sin which doth so easily beset them be a little one, it is comparatively unimportant, scarcely worth the trouble of giving up. Whereas, on the contrary, it may actually be doing them and their neighbours more injury than was ever inflicted by any sin that would commonly be called great.

The sins of the tongue-the sins of evil speaking, rash speaking, unkind speaking, and so forth

-are all, according to the common way of thinking, little sins. But listen to what St James says in regard to them : The tongue is a little member. . . . Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts and of birds, and of serpents and of things in the sea, hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."

He could not have said in more emphatic language that the sins of the tongue are among the greatest of sins. And his emphasis is perfectly just. Little words," says Sophocles, "make or mar men." The words of scandal-mongers have blackened irretrievably many a fair reputation, destroyed ruthlessly many a valuable friendship, blasted for ever many an innocent life. Society may wink at such sins and call them little; the law may be unable to protect us from them, or to punish them; but an uncorrupted moral sense will always pronounce them great and grievous in the

extreme.

It is curious to notice that the very characteristics which commonly earn for a sin the name of little, are often just the characteristics which in reality enhance its sinfulness, and render it pre-eminently worthy of being called great. For example, an ingenious prevarication would be usually considered far less sinful than a downright and awkward falsehood. It would be dignified with a euphemistic title, and called "a white lie." But the kernel of truth which it contains makes it more sinful, not less. It shows its per

petrator to be a cultivated liar.

Judged, too, by

its effects, it may often be discovered to be a lie

of surpassing magnitude.

"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,

But a lie which is half a truth is a harder matter to fight."

A little sin, if there were such a thing, would be one that did little harm. But you will observe that the sins commonly called little are sins which can be, and which as a matter of fact are, constantly repeated. Hence, in the long-run, it is these sins that do the greatest amount of mischief. A man cannot commit many murders. He is generally hanged for the first, and there is an end of him. But the sins of temper and of speech and of heart, the sins of unkindness, of unneighbourliness, of selfishness, are sins which we can go on committing without fear of punishment, every day, every hour, every moment. Since, then, in the words of the Scotch proverb, "Many littles make a muckle," and since these little sins may be endlessly repeated, the amount of suffering which can be inflicted by them is practically infinite. Allow me to illustrate this point. In common parlance, theft is a great sin and bad temper is a little sin. But suppose that a member of your family, with whom you are compelled to live, is incessantly annoying, incessantly torturing you by his moroseness, by his

spitefulness, by his paroxysms of horrible rage, will you say that he is less of a sinner than a pickpocket? Will you say that one who has made your home a very hell is a more righteous person than another who has merely taken away your handkerchief? Why, the misery caused by all the pickpockets in the world to the whole human race, is less than that inflicted on your single self by the so-called little sins of your relative's detestable temper.

And the sins of which we are speaking not only cause a vast amount of suffering, but they have the most fatal effect upon character. A great sin, severely punished and bitterly repented of, is not at all likely to be repeated. Whatever crime it may have been that was committed by the author of Five Years' Penal Servitude,' any one who has read that book can see that its writer was in no danger of becoming a felon a second time. He evidently felt his punishment so acutely, that the remembrance of it would. be practically omnipotent as a warning for the future. On the contrary, the sins which seem to be little, just for that very reason, and also because they are generally unpunished, are likely to be first of all ignored by a man, and then repeated, till at last their total effect may be to

render his character hopelessly and irretrievably bad. A number of very little sins will make a very great sinner.

"Sands make the mountain, moments make the year."

Again, our so-called little sins have the most fatal moral effect upon the characters of others. They are just the sins which others will be likely to imitate. The average man is more likely to be infected by such a sin as scandal than he is to be infected by such a sin as theft. Therefore these little sins do the most widespread moral mischief in society. They not only diminish our neighbour's happiness, but they injure his moral nature. And this deterioration of his character will have a similar tendency to deteriorate the character of others. Thus our neighbour's neighbours, persons whom we do not know and whom we cannot directly influence, may be morally injured, may be even morally ruined, by what we choose to consider our little sins.

From what I have said it must be sufficiently evident that if we desire to form for ourselves a perfect character, a studied avoidance of little sins is of the first importance. There is a wise maxim, current in common life, which tells us that if we take care of the pence the pounds will