CHAPTER III.

OF SIN.

THERE are two matters which especially cause a great deal of perplexity and confusion in the Church and the world. These are the good points of bad people, and the bad points of good people. It happens this way a man considers himself, and the world will take him at his own valuation, as a religious man ; and yet people will perhaps be found to say, and, what is more, with some measure of justice, that he is rather mean and selfish and narrow-minded, and at times not over-nice in reference to the exact claims of truth and justice. Again, a man avows that he is irreligious, and there is no doubt in the mind of his particular world that he has formed a perfectly accurate estimate of himself. But they say, perhaps, that he is amiable and frank and generous-contrasting him herein very favourably with the first caseand withal a highly honourable man. Then it is vaguely argued that the one man's religion does him no particular good, and the other man's irreligion does him no particular harm; and beyond this, by some confusion of thought, that religion is not, after all,

so very important a matter. It will not be difficult to expose the underlying fallacies. Thus much must be first admitted, that it is perfectly wonderful how much infirmity and evil and imperfection may exist, not only with the profession, but with the reality of the Christian character. Those who place such stumbling-blocks in the way have much to ponder on and to grieve over. But it is the wildest logic to suppose any necessary connection between Christianity and the blots upon Christianity. A man is a Christian, not by reason of these defects, but in spite of them. Ultimately, too, either the Christianity will kill the defects, or the defects will kill the Christianity. Here, also, a certain consideration occurs. The comparison made by the world between the religious and the irreligious man may be unfairly drawn, erring both on the side of leniency and on the side of severity. The irreligious man may be earning his reputation for good points very cheaply. He may deserve no particular credit for frankness, amiability, and generosity. These are the accidents of his position or his disposition. They cost him no effort, demand no sacrifice, and have little more than a nominal moral value. But the religious man may also have his natural good points, and further good points which he has received by the painful eradication of evil The critic hardly enumerates these, but fastens upon the flaws which are more easily seen on the cleansed ground, namely, those points of the natural

ones.

OUR DEFINITE RELATION TOWARDS GOD.

37

character where Satan has his fast and firmest stronghold; where the battle is most frequently repeated, and the defeat most often sustained.

But the true answer to this vague, indefinite, hostile criticism, is the objection that it is altogether irrelevant to the real issue. The question is, Do we or do we not stand in a certain definite, external relationship to God? Are we His creatures, and is He our Creator? As such, does He possess certain claims upon us, and do we satisfy or do we ignore these. claims? Men may speak of estimable natural qualities, and all they claim may be at once conceded; but how does this affect the real issue? Take an analogous case. A monarch declares a free amnesty to the people of a rebellious province. If within a definite time, and in a definite manner, they plead the royal forgiveness, they are to be freely pardoned, and to be restored even to something better than their lost estate. If a man refused to take advantage of these terms, it would be nothing to the purpose to reply, that he possessed an excellent taste in the fine arts, or a great many agreeable social qualities. By electing to remain in the rebel's position, he, by his own act, makes himself liable to the rebel's doom. Which things are an allegory: this earth is the lapsed province, and we ourselves the guilty conspirators. And the great question, which remains quite unaffected by that inaccurate and irrelevant reasoning which I have cited, is this-whether we have come to

38

THE NATURE OF SIN.

the knowledge of ourselves, and by a free act of will have struck covenant with the All-Merciful.

To speak concerning sin is certainly to discuss a very dreary subject; and we all discuss this subject with a measure of stiffness and reluctance, and with the consciousness that we are using expressions the full force of which we fail to attain. Holiness is a little thing to us, even as the stars are very little things to us, because of the exceeding distance of such. I suppose we cannot fully understand the nature of sin so long as we wear the body of this nature, and are informed by this xn, the natural, animal soul. The pressure of sin is like the pressure of the atmosphere, so equally diffused that we do not feel the pressure. The air is above and around and within us, and so we are ignorant of the enormous weight of the atmospheric column. Even so we live in an atmosphere of sin, and fail to comprehend its exceeding sinfulness.

Volumes have been written, and may yet be written, concerning the nature of sin.* Fallen creatures like ourselves cannot estimate aright the nature and extent of our fall; but though we do not comprehend the nature of the cause, we may form some judgment concerning it from what we witness of the effects. We observe in nature a series of antecedents and consequents, and, as a convenient form, we sum them up as causes and effects. In reality we have not * Especially see Julius Müller's great work.

THE EFFECTS OF SIN.

39

got an explanation; we have only got a formula. Still we may, from what we see of the effects, attain to some conception, however partial and limited, of the cause. We may divine something of the nature of sin from what we see of its effects. Sin occupies at least one hemisphere of life and of the world; it includes all its shadow and darkness and evil. Sin has bowed the form, and wrinkled the brow, and whitened the hair; sin has made the young prematurely old, and the old prematurely wretched and broken; sin has made the roll of human history one continuous record, or rather one prolonged wail, of lamentation, mourning, and woe; sin has poisoned all kindly natural founts, and flung its Upas shadow over all glad human growths. Think of the battlefield, where thousands, in the vigour of health and youth, torture and murder each other; think of all the dark secrets of the prison and the hospital; think of the gloom and terribleness of disease and dissolution; think of that which caused the Son of God to hang a helpless victim on the cross, in the awful darkness of the Father's alienated countenance; think of that which heaps up the fire which is never quenched, and lends vitality to the worm which never dies. These are the effects of sin. What, then, must sin be, which is the cause of all this?

God includes the whole family of mankind in the same guilt and in the same condemnation. There is no difference, for all have sinned. Only there are