Page:The Praises of Amida, 1907.djvu/79

 to conceal its body, and he awakes one day to find himself the laughing-stock of his neighbours. I think that all my hearers have had some experience of such cases in their daily lives. 6. These things may be but trifles; but when sin is added to sin, the suffering gradually increases, and the load of care grows heavier, until the man is at last overwhelmed with a restlessness and fear that he can no longer conceal. The young pastor in the American novel was an example of this. Another instance that comes to my mind is Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, who could find no peace after he had escaped from prison. A few years ago, a prisoner escaped from a House of Correction in Hokkaido, and having done so, found that he could not get a moment's peace, so great was his fear of being taken and sentenced to another term of punishment. When the breeze rustled in the trees, he thought it was a detective on his track, the sound of dropping water filled him with apprehensions of a policeman on the watch, the bark