no,” one says, “but I know that I can go just so far in such-and-such a sin, and there I can stop.” Presumption, Sir; nothing but presumption. It would be presumption for any man to climb to the top of the spire of a church, and stand upon his head. ‘Well, but he might come down safely, if he were skilled in it.’ Yes, but it is presumptuous. I would no more think of subscribing a farthing to a man’s ascent in a balloon, than I would to a poor wretch cutting his own throat. I would no more think of standing and gazing at any man who puts his life in a position of peril, than I would of paying a man to blow his brains out. I think such things, if not murders, are murderous. There is suicide in men risking themselves in that way; and if there is suicide in the risk of the body, how much more in the case of a man who puts his own soul in jeopardy just because he thinks he has strength of mind enough to prevent its being ruined and destroyed. Sir, your sin is a sin of presumption; it is a great and grievous one; it is one of the masterpieces of iniquity.
11. Oh! how many people are there who are sinning presumptuously today! You are sinning presumptuously in being today what you are. You are saying, in a short time I will solemnly and seriously think of religion; in a few years, when I am a little more settled in life, I intend to turn over a new leaf, and think about the matters of Godliness. Sir, you are presumptuous. You are presuming that you shall live; you are speculating upon a thing which is as frail as the bubble on the breaker; you are staking your everlasting soul on the deadly odds that you shall live for a few years, whereas, the probabilities are, that you may be cut down before the sun shall set: and it is possible, that before another year shall have passed over your head, you may be in the land where repentance is impossible, and useless if it were possible. Oh! dear friends, procrastination is a presumptuous sin. The putting off a thing which should be done today, because you hope to live tomorrow, is a presumption. You have no right to do it — you are in so doing sinning against God, and bringing on your heads the guilt of presumptuous sin. I remember that striking passage in Jonathan Edward’s wonderful sermon, which was the means of a great revival, where he says, “Sinner, you are this moment standing over the mouth of hell, upon a single plank, and that plank is rotten; you are hanging over the jaws of perdition, by a solitary rope, and the strands of that rope are creaking now.” It is a terrible thing to be in such a position as that, and yet to say, “tomorrow,” and to procrastinate. You remind me, some of you, of that story of Dionysius the tyrant, who, wishing to punish one who had displeased him, invited him to a noble feast. Rich were the viands that were spread upon the table, and rare the wines of which he was invited to drink. A chair was placed at the head of the table, and the guest was seated within it. Horror of horrors! The feast might be rich, but the guest was miserable, dreadful beyond thought. However splendid might be the array of the servants, and however rich the dainties, yet he who had been invited sat there in agony. For what reason? Because over his head, immediately over it, there hung a sword, a furbished sword, suspended by a single hair. He had to sit all the time with this sword above him, with nothing but a hair between him and death, you may conceive the poor man’s misery. He could not escape; he must sit where he was. How could he feast? How could he rejoice? But, oh my unconverted hearer, you are there this morning, man, with all your riches and your wealth before you, with the comforts of a home and the joys of a household; you are there this day, in a place from which you cannot escape; the sword of death above you, prepared to descend; and woe to you, when it shall cleave your soul from your body! Can you yet make mirth, and yet procrastinate? If you can, then truly your sin is presumptuous in a high degree. “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.”
12. II. And now I come to the second part of the subject, with which I shall deal very briefly. I am to try and show WHY IT IS THAT THERE IS GREAT ENORMITY IN A PRESUMPTUOUS SIN.
13. Let me take any one of the sins: for instance, the sin against light and knowledge. There is greater enormity in such a presumptuous sin than in any other. In this our happy land it is just possible for a man to commit treason. I think it must be rather difficult for him to do it; for we are allowed to say words here which would have brought our necks beneath the guillotine, if they had been spoken on the other side the channel; and we are allowed to do deeds here which would have brought us long years of imprisonment, if the deed had been done in any other land. We, despite all that our American friends may say, are the freest people to speak and think in all the world. Though we have not the freedom of beating our slaves to death, or of shooting them if they choose to disobey — though we have not the freedom of hunting men, or the freedom of sucking another man’s blood out of him to make us rich — though we have not the freedom of being worse than demons, which slave catchers and many slave holders most certainly are — we have liberty greater than that; liberty against the tyrant mob, as well as against the tyrant king. But I suppose it is just possible to commit treason here. Now, if two men should commit treason — if one of them should wantonly and wickedly raise the standard of revolt tomorrow, should denounce the rightful sovereign of this land in the strongest and most abominable language, should seek to entice the loyal subjects of this country from their allegiance, and should draw some of them astray, to the harm and injury of the common good. He might have in his rebellions ranks one who joined incautiously, not knowing where the matter might lead, who might come into the midst of the rebels, not understanding the intention of their unlawful assembling, not even knowing the law which prohibited them from being banded together. I can suppose these two men brought up upon a charge of high treason: they have both, legally, been guilty of it; but I can suppose that the one man who had sinned ignorantly would be acquitted, because there was no malignant intent; and I can suppose that the other man, who had wilfully, knowingly, maliciously and wickedly raised the standard of revolt, would receive the highest punishment which the law could demand. And why? Because in the one case it was a sin of presumption, and in the other case it was not so. In the one case the man dared to defy the sovereign, and defy the law of the land, wilfully, out of mere presumption. In the other case not so. Now, every man sees that it would be just to make a distinction in the punishment, because there is — conscience itself tells us — a distinction in the guilt.
14. Again: some men, I have said, sin deliberately, and others do not do so. Now, in order to show that there is a distinction here, let me take a case. Tomorrow the bench of magistrates are sitting. Two men are brought up. They are each of them charged with stealing a loaf of bread. It is clearly proven, in the one case that the man was hungry, and that he snatched the loaf of bread to satisfy his necessities. He is sorry for his deed, he grieves that he has done the act; but most manifestly he had a strong temptation to it. In the other case the man was rich, and he wilfully went into the shop merely because he wished break the law and show that he was a lawbreaker. He said to the policeman outside, “Now, I care neither for you nor the law; I intend to go in there, just to see what you can do with me.” I can suppose the magistrate would say to one man, “You are discharged; take care not to do the like again; there is something for your present necessities; seek to earn an honest living.” But to the other I can conceive him saying, “You are an infamous wretch; you have committed the same deed as the other, but from very different motives; I give you the longest term of imprisonment which the law allows me, and I can only regret that I cannot treat you worse than I have done.” The presumption of the sin made the difference. So when you sin deliberately and knowingly, your sin against Almighty God is a higher and a blacker sin than it would have been if you had sinned ignorantly, or sinned in haste.
15. Now let us suppose one more case. In the heat of some little dispute some one shall insult a man. You shall be insulted by a man of angry temper; you have not provoked him, you gave him no just cause for it; but at the same time he was of a hot and angry disposition, he was somewhat foiled in the debate, and he insulted you, calling you by some name which has left a stain upon your character, so far as epithets can do it. I can suppose that you would ask no reparation from him, if by tomorrow you saw that it was just a rash word spoken in haste, of which he repented. But suppose another person should waylay you in the street, should week after week seek to meet you in the market place, and should after a great deal of toil and trouble at last meet you, and there, in the centre of a number of people, unprovoked, just out of sheer, deliberate malice, come before you and call you a liar in the street; I can suppose
