Chicken Detectives.
The Los Angeles Times tells how the strange actions of a lot of chickens led to the discovery of a supply of opium much wanted by the police. For days the-police had been searching the neighborhood. They knew that someone there was selling opium, but could not find it. At last they noticed that some chickens in a certain yard were acting queerly, as if they were horribly sick. Two hens were scratching aimlessly at a half-buried can, and this can, the detectives found, was full of opium. The secret of the woman who owned the hens was out, and she was promptly arrested.
My brother! Chickens are scratching in every spot where you have buried a sin, to gloat over it in secret, to take hidden pleasure in it, and get fancied gain from it. Chickens are stalking around, ready to cluck your secret to all passers-by. Chickens are silly-seeming birds, but they are shrewd in disclosing folly. "Murder will out" is a wise maxim. "Be sure your sin will find you out" is another one. No one is ever so fooled as the man who expects to cheat the Judge of all the earth.
Trapped!
A Boston shoplifter was caught in a comical way. He had stolen a muff in a department store, and ran with it to the escalators; but instead of boarding the one going down, in his haste he took the ascending stairway! He tried hard to run down, but was confronted by the ascending passengers, while all the time the merciless steps were rising. Finally, in spite of his frantic efforts, he was borne back to the head of the stairs again, where he found a policeman awaiting him!
This is a just picture of the difficult ways of sinners. They try to escape with their booty, but they find all the ways of providence running against them. Everything conspires to their discovery.
"Be sure your sin will find you out." The sinner is his own detective. If there is no policeman at hand, he will arrest himself. If the police-wagon is out of commission, he will run to the courtroom. Remorse is sterner than any judge, and a guilty conscience is more terrible than any prison.
Be certain of this: if you sin, the entire universe will become an escalator, going the wrong way!