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Sin: Its Encroaching Nature

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Sin: Its Hardening Effects

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When a sin is let in as a suppliant, it remains in as a tyrant. The Arabs have a fable of a miller who one day was startled by a camel's nose thrust in the window of the room where he was sleeping. 'It is very cold outside,' said the camel, 'I only want to get my nose in.' The nose was let in, then the neck, and finally the whole body. Presently the miller began to be extremely inconvenienced at the ungainly companion he had obtained in a room certainly not big enough for both. 'If you are inconvenienced you may leave,' said the camel; 'as for myself, I shall stay where I am.' There are many such camels knocking at the human heart. Take, for instance, compliance with a single worldly custom: dancing. First, the custom creeps humbly to the door of the heart, and says, 'Let me in; what am I but putting one foot before another? certainly you do not object to music, and I would not for the world have a full band.' So in comes the nose of the camel, and it is not long before the entire body follows. The Christian then finds his heart occupied in full figure by the very vice which a little while before peeped in so meekly. 'Being up,' it says to him, 'all night at a ball, with the eyes dazzled by lights, and the ears stunned with a full band, interferes, you say, with your private devotions. So it does. But your private devotions will have to go, for I will not.': Episcopal Recorder.