lies in the far distance he dare not consider!  This is where the Pause comes in all progress,—­the hesitation, the doubt, the fear;—­the moment when the Creature draws so near to his Creator that he is dazzled and confounded.  And it is a strange fact that he is always left alone,—­ alone with his own Will, in every such grand crisis.  He has been helped so much by divine influences, that he is evidently considered strong enough to decide his own fate.  He is strong enough,—­he has sufficient reason and knowledge to decide it for the Highest, if he would.  But, with national culture goes national luxury,—­the more civilised a community, the greater its bodily ease,—­the more numerous the temptations against which we are told we must fight.  Spirit flies forward—­Body pulls back.  But Spirit is one day bound to win!  We have attained in this generation a certain knowledge of Soul-forces—­and we are on a verge, where, if we hesitate, we are lost, and must recoil upon our own Ego as the centre of all desire.  But if we go on boldly and leave our own Ego behind, we shall see the gates of Heaven opening indeed, and all the Mysteries unveiled!  How often we pause on the verge of better things, doubting whether to rise or grovel!  The light in us is darkness, and how great is that darkness!  Such is the state of mind in which I, your preacher, have found myself for many years!  I do not know whether to rise or grovel,—­to sink or soar!  To be absolutely candid with you, I am quite sure that I should not sink in your opinion for confessing myself to be as outrageous in my conceptions of mortality as many of you are.  You would possibly pretend to be ashamed of me, but in your hearts you would like me all the better.  The sinking or the soaring of my nature has therefore nothing whatever to do with you.  It is a strictly personal question.  But what I specially wish to advise you of this morning,—­taking myself as an example,—­is that none of you, whether inclined to virtue or to vice, should remain such arrant fools as to imagine that your sins will not find you out.  They will,—­the instant they are committed, their sole mission is to start on your track, and hunt you down!  I cannot absolutely vouch to you that there is a God,—­but I am positive there is a hidden process of mathematics going on in the universe which sums up our slightest human affairs with an exactitude which at the least is amazing.  Twenty-five years ago I did a great wrong to a human creature who was innocent, and who absolutely trusted me.  There is no crime worse than this, yet it seemed to me quite a trifling affair,—­an amusement—­a nothing!  I was perfectly aware that by some excessively straightlaced people it might be termed a sin; but my ideas of sin were as easy and condoning as yours are.  I never repented it,—­I can hardly say I ever thought of it,—­if I did I excused myself quickly, and assured my own conscience in the usual way, that the fault was merely the result of circumstances over which I had no control.