‘Sin is the transgression of the law’ (1 John 3 :4).
He that wishes to attain right views about Christian holiness must begin
by examining the vast and solemn subject of sin. He must dig down very
low if he would build high. A mistake here is most mischievous. Wrong
views about holiness are generally traceable to wrong views about
human corruption. I make no apology for beginning this volume of
papers about holiness by making some plain statements about sin.
The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all
saving Christianity. Without it such doctrines as justification,
conversion, sanctification, are ‘words and names’ which convey no
meaning to the mind. The first thing, therefore, that God does when He
makes anyone a new creature in Christ, is to send light into his heart
and show him that he is a guilty sinner. The material creation in Genesis
began with ‘light’, and so also does the spiritual creation. God ‘shines
into our hearts’ by the work of the Holy Ghost and then spiritual life
begins (2 Cor. 4:6). Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most
of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day. If a man
does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot
wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies. I believe that
one of the chief wants of the church in the nineteenth century has
been, and is, clearer, fuller teaching about sin.
1. I shall begin the subject by supplying some definition of sin. We
are all, of course, familiar with the terms ‘sin’ and ‘sinners’. We talk
frequently of ‘sin’ being in the world and of men committing ‘sins’.
But what do we mean by these terms and phrases? Do we really know?
I fear there is much mental confusion and haziness on this point. Let
me try, as briefly as possible, to supply an answer.
I say, then, that ‘sin’, speaking generally, is, as the Ninth Article of
our church declares, ‘the fault and corruption of the nature of every
man that is naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby
man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own
nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always against the spirit;
and, therefore, in every person born into the world, it deserveth God’s
wrath and damnation’. Sin, in short, is that vast moral disease which
affects the whole human race,'of every rank and class and name and
nation and people and tongue, a disease from which there never was but
one born of woman that was free. Need I say that One was Christ Jesus
the Lord?
I say, furthermore, that ‘a sin’, to speak more particularly, consists
in doing, saying, thinking or imagining anything that is not in perfect
conformity with the mind and law of God. ‘Sin’, in short as the
Scripture saith, is ‘the transgression of the law’ (1 John 3:4). The
slightest outward or inward departure from absolute mathematical
parallelism with God's revealed will and character constitutes a sin, and
at once makes us guilty in God’s sight.
Of course, I need not tell anyone who reads his Bible with attention,
that a man may break God’s law in heart and thought, when there is
no overt and visible act of wickedness. Our Lord has settled that point
beyond dispute in the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5:21-28). Even a
poet of our own has truly said, ‘A man may smile and smile, and be a
villain.’
Again, I need not tell a careful student of the New Testament, that
there are sins of omission as well as commission, and that we sin, as our
Prayer Book justly reminds us, by ‘leaving undone the things we ought
to do’, as really as by ‘doing the things we ought not to do’. The solemn
words of our Master in the Gospel of St Matthew place this point also
beyond dispute. It is there written: ‘Depart . . ., ye cursed, into
everlasting fire. . . for I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink’ (Matt. 25:41, 42). It was a deep and
thoughtful saying of holy Archbishop Usher, just before he died: ‘Lord,
forgive me all my sins, and specially my sins of omission.’
But I do think it necessary in these times to remind my readers that
a man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it and fancy himself
innocent when he is guilty. I fail to see any scriptural warrant for the
modern assertion that: ‘Sin is not sin to us until we discern it and are
conscious of it.‘ On the contrary, in the fourth and fifth chapters of
that unduly neglected book, Leviticus, and in the fifteenth of Numbers,
I find Israel distinctly taught that there were sins of ignorance which
rendered people unclean and needed atonement (Lev. 4: 1-35; 5:14-19;
Num. 15:25-29). And I find our Lord expressly teaching that ‘the
servant who knew not his master’s will and did it not’, was not excused
on account of his ignorance, but was ‘beaten’ or punished (Luke 12:48).
We shall do well to remember that, when we make our own miserably
imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness,
we are on very dangerous ground. A deeper study of Leviticus might do
us much good.
2. Concerning the origin and source of this vast moral disease called
‘sin’, I must say something. I fear the views of many professing Christians
on this point are sadly defective and unsound. I dare not pass it by. Let
us, then, have it fixed down in our minds that the sinfulness of man
does not begin from without, but from within. It is not the result of
bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions
and bad examples, as some weak Christians are too fond of saying. No!
It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam
and Eve, and with which we are born. Created ‘in the image of God’,
innocent and righteous at first, our parents fell from original
righteousness and became sinful and corrupt. And from that day to this all men
and women are born in the image of fallen Adam and Eve and inherit a
heart and nature inclined to evil. ‘By one man sin entered into the
world.’ ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh.’ ‘We are by nature
children of wrath.’ ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God.’ ‘Out of the
heart [naturally, as out of a fountain] proceed evil thoughts, adulteries’
and the like (Rom. 5:12; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3; Rom. 8:7; Mark 7:21).
The fairest babe, that has entered life this year and become the
sunbeam of a family, is not, as its mother perhaps fondly calls it, a little
‘angel’, or a little ‘innocent’, but a little ‘sinner’. Alas! As it lies smiling
and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds
of every kind of wickedness! Only watch it carefully, as it grows in
stature and its mind develops, and you will soon detect in it an
incessant tendency to that which is bad, and a backwardness to that
which is good. You will see in it the buds and germs of deceit, evil
temper, selfishness, self-will, obstinacy, greediness, envy, jealousy,
passion, which, if indulged and let alone, will shoot up with painful
rapidity. Who taught the child these things? Where did he learn them?
The Bible alone can answer these questions! Of all the foolish things
that parents say about their children there is none worse than the
common saying: ‘My son has a good heart at the bottom. He is not
what he ought to be, but he has fallen into bad hands. Public schools
are bad places. The tutors neglect the boys. Yet he has a good heart at
the bottom.’ The truth, unhappily, is diametrically the other way. The
first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy’s own heart,
and not in the school.
3. Concerning the extent of this vast moral disease of man called
‘sin’, let us beware that we make no mistake. The only safe ground is
that which is laid for us in Scripture. ‘Every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart’ is by nature ‘evil’, and that ‘continually’. ‘The
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked’ (Gen. 6:5;
Jer. 17:9). Sin is a disease which pervades and runs through every part
of our moral constitution and every faculty of our minds. The
understanding, the affections, the reasoning powers, the will, are all more or
less infected. Even the conscience is so blinded that it cannot be
depended on as a sure guide, and is as likely to lead men wrong as right,
unless it is enlightened by the Holy Ghost. In short, ‘from the sole of
the foot even unto the head there is no soundness’ about us (Isa. 1:6).
The disease may be veiled under a thin covering of courtesy, politeness,
good manners and outward decorum, but it lies deep down in the
constitution.
I admit fully that man has many grand and noble faculties left about
him, and that in arts and sciences and literature he shows immense
capacity. But the fact still remains that in spiritual things he is utterly
‘dead’, and has no natural knowledge, or love, or fear of God. His best
things are so interwoven and intermingled with corruption, that the
contrast only brings out into sharper relief the truth and extent of the
Fall. That one and the same creature should be in some things so high
and in others so low; so great and yet so little; so noble and yet so mean;
so grand in his conception and execution of material things and yet so
grovelling and debased in his affections; that he should be able to plan
and erect buildings like those at Carnac and Luxor in Egypt and the
Parthenon at Athens, and yet worship vile gods and goddesses and birds
and beasts and creeping things; that he should be able to produce
tragedies like those of AEschylus and Sophocles, and histories like that
of Thucydides, and yet be a slave to abominable vices like those
described in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — all this is a
sore puzzle to those who sneer at ‘God's Word written’, and scoff at us
as bibliolaters. But it is a knot that we can untie with the Bible in our
hands. We can acknowledge that man has all the marks of a majestic
temple about him, a temple in which God once dwelt, but a temple
which is now in utter ruins, a temple in which a shattered window here,
and a doorway there, and a column there, still give some faint idea of
the magnificence of the original design, but a temple which from end to
end has lost its glory and fallen from its high estate. And we say that
nothing solves the complicated problem of man’s condition but the
doctrine of original or birth-sin and the crushing effects of the Fall.
Let us remember, beside this, that every part of the world bears
testimony to the fact that sin is the universal disease of all mankind.
Search the globe from east to west and from pole to pole; search every
nation of every clime in the four quarters of the earth; search every
rank and class in our own country from the highest to the lowest — and
under every circumstance and condition, the report will be always the
same. The remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, completely separate
from Europe, Asia, Africa and America, beyond the reach alike of
oriental luxury and Western arts and literature, islands inhabited by
people ignorant of books, money, steam and gunpowder,
uncontaminated by the vices of modern civilization, these very islands have
always been found, when first discovered, the abode of the vilest forms
of lust, cruelty, deceit and superstition. If the inhabitants have known
nothing else, they have always known how to sin! Everywhere the
human heart is naturally ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked’ (Jer. 17:9). For my part, I know no stronger proof of the
inspiration of Genesis and the Mosaic account of the origin of man,
than the power, extent and universality of sin. Grant that mankind have
all sprung from one pair, and that this pair fell (as Genesis 3 tells us),
and the state of human nature everywhere is easily accounted for. Deny
it, as many do, and you are at once involved in inexplicable difficulties.
In a word, the uniformity and universality of human corruption supply
one of the most unanswerable instances of the enormous ‘difficulties
of infidelity’.
After all, I am convinced that the greatest proof of the extent and
power of sin is the pertinacity with which it cleaves to man, even after
he is converted and has become the subject of the Holy Ghost’s
operations. To use the language of the ninth Article: ‘This infection of nature
doth remain — yea, even in them that are regenerate.’ So deeply planted
are the roots of human corruption, that even after we are born again,
renewed, washed, sanctified, justified and made living members of
Christ, these roots remain alive in the bottom of our hearts and, like the
leprosy in the walls of the house, we never get rid of them until the
earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved. Sin, no doubt, in the
believer’s heart, has no longer dominion. It is checked, controlled,
mortified and crucified by the expulsive power of the new principle of
grace. The life of a believer is a life of victory and not of failure. But
the very struggles which go on within his bosom, the fight that he finds
it needful to fight daily, the watchful jealousy which he is obliged to
exercise over his inner man, the contest between the flesh and the spirit,
the inward ‘groanings’ which no one knows but he who has experienced
them — all, all testify to the same great truth, all show the enormous
power and vitality of sin. Mighty indeed must that foe be who even
when crucified is still alive! Happy is that believer who understands it
and, while he rejoices in Christ Jesus, has no confidence in the flesh
and, while he says, ‘Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory,‘
never forgets to watch and pray lest he fall into temptation!
4. Concerning the guilt, vileness and offensiveness of sin in the sight
of God, my words shall be few. I say ‘few’ advisedly. I do not think, in
the nature of things, that mortal man can at all realize the exceeding
sinfulness of sin in the sight of that holy and perfect One with whom
we have to do. On the one hand, God is that eternal Being who
‘chargeth His angels with folly’, and in whose sight the very ‘heavens are
not clean’. He is One who reads thoughts and motives as well as actions
and requires ‘truth in the inward parts’ (Job 4:18; 15:15; Ps. 51:6). We,
on the other hand — poor blind creatures, here today and gone tomorrow,
born in sin, surrounded by sinners, living in a constant atmosphere of
weakness, infirmity and imperfection — can form none but the most
inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil. We have no line to
fathom it and no measure by which to gauge it. The blind man can see
no difference between a masterpiece of Titian or Raphael and the
queen's head on a village signboard. The deaf man cannot distinguish
between a penny whistle and a cathedral organ. The very animals whose
smell is most offensive to us have no idea that they are offensive and
are not offensive to one another. And man, fallen man, I believe, can
have no just idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of that God whose
handiwork is absolutely perfect — perfect whether we look through
telescope or microscope; perfect in the formation of a mighty planet like
Jupiter, with his satellites, keeping time to a second as he rolls round
the sun; perfect in the formation of the smallest insect that crawls over
a foot of ground. But let us nevertheless settle it firmly in our minds
that sin is ‘the abominable thing that God hateth’; that God ‘is of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity, and cannot look upon that which is evil’;
that the least transgression of God’s law makes us ‘guilty of all’; that
‘the soul that sinneth shall die’; that ‘the wages of sin is death’; that
God shall ‘judge the secrets of men’; that there is a worm that never
dies and a fire that is not quenched; that ‘the wicked shall be turned
into hell’ and ‘shall go away into everlasting punishment’; and that
‘nothing that defiles shall in any wise enter’ heaven (Jer. 44:4; Hab.
1:13;James 2:10; Ezek. 18:4; Rom. 6:23; Rom. 2:16; Mark 9:44;Ps.
9:17; Matt. 25:46; Rev. 21:27). These are indeed tremendous words,
when we consider that they are written in the book of a most merciful
God!
No proof of the fulness of sin, after all, is so overwhelming and
unanswerable as the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and the
whole doctrine of His substitution and atonement. Terribly black must
that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could
make satisfaction. Heavy must that weight of human sin be which made
Jesus groan and sweat drops of blood in agony at Gethsemane and cry
at Golgotha, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ (Matt.
27:46). Nothing, I am convinced, will astonish us so much, when we
awake in the resurrection day, as the view we shall have of sin and the
retrospect we shall take of our own countless shortcomings and defects.
Never till the hour when Christ comes the second time shall we fully
realize the ‘sinfulness of sin’. Well might George Whitefield say, ‘The
anthem in heaven will be: What hath God wrought!’
5. One point only remains to be considered on the subject of sin,
which I dare not pass over. That point is its deceitfulness. It is a point
of most serious importance and I venture to think it does not receive
the attention which it deserves. You may see this deceitfulness in the
wonderful proneness of men to regard sin as less sinful and dangerous
than it is in the sight of God and in their readiness to extenuate it,
make excuses for it and minimize its guilt. ‘It is but a little one! God is
merciful! God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss! We mean
well! One cannot be so particular! Where is the mighty harm? We only
do as others!’ Who is not familiar with this kind of language? You may
sec it in the long string of smooth words and phrases which men have
coined in order to designate things which God calls downright wicked
and ruinous to the soul. What do such expressions as ‘fast’, ‘gay’, ‘wild’,
‘unsteady’, ‘thoughtless’, ‘loose’ mean? They show that men try to
cheat themselves into the belief that sin is not quite so sinful as God
says it is, and that they are not so bad as they really are. You may see it
in the tendency even of believers to indulge their children in
questionable practices, and to blind their own eyes to the inevitable
result of the love of money, of tampering with temptation and
sanctioning a low standard of family religion. I fear we do not
sufficiently realize the extreme subtlety of our soul’s disease. We are
too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in
its true colours, saying, ‘I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin
you for ever in hell.’ Oh, no! Sin comes to us, like Judas, with a kiss,
and like Joab, with an outstretched hand and flattering words. The
forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve, yet it cast her out
of Eden. The walking idly on his palace roof seemed harmless enough
to David, yet it ended in adultery and murder. Sin rarely seems sin at its
first beginnings. Let us then watch and pray, lest we fall into
temptation. We may give wickedness smooth names, but we cannot
alter its nature and character in the sight of God. Let us remember St
Paul’s words: ‘Exhort one another daily... lest any be hardened
through the deceitfulness of sin’ (Heb. 3:13). It is a wise prayer in our
Litany: ‘From the deceits of the world, the flesh and the devil, good
Lord, deliver us.’
And now, before I go further, let me briefly mention two thoughts
which appear to me to rise with irresistible force out of the subject.
On the one hand, I ask my readers to observe what deep reasons we
all have for humiliation and self-abasement. Let us sit down before the
picture of sin displayed to us in the Bible and consider what guilty, vile,
corrupt creatures we all are in the sight of God. What need we all have
of that entire change ‘of heart called regeneration, new birth or
conversion! What a mass of infirmity and imperfection cleaves to the
very best of us at our very best! What a solemn thought it is that
‘without holiness no man shall see the Lord’! (Heb. 12:14). What cause
we have to cry with the publican every night in our lives, when we
think of our sins of omission as well as commission, ‘God be merciful to
me a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13). How admirably suited are the general and
communion confessions of the Prayer Book to the actual condition of
all professing Christians! How well that language suits God’s children
which the Prayer Book puts in the mouth of every churchman before
he goes up to the communion table: ‘The remembrance of our
misdoings is grievous unto us; the burden is intolerable. Have mercy
upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; for Thy Son our
Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past.’ How true it is that
the holiest saint is in himself a miserable sinner and a debtor to mercy
and grace to the last moment of his existence!
With my whole heart I subscribe to that passage in Hooker’s sermon
on ‘Justification’, which begins: ‘Let the holiest and best things we do
be considered. We are never better affected unto God than when we
pray; yet when we pray, how are our affections many times distracted!
How little reverence do we show unto the grand majesty of God unto
whom we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! How little
taste of the sweet influence of His tender mercies do we feel! Are we
not as unwilling many times to begin, and as glad to make an end, as if
in saying, “Call upon Me,” He had set us a very burdensome task? It may
seem somewhat extreme, which I will speak; therefore, let every one
judge of it, even as his own heart shall tell him, and not otherwise; I will
but only make a demand! If God should yield unto us, not as unto
Abraham — if fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, yea, or if ten good persons
could be found in a city, for their sakes this city should not be
destroyed but, and if He should make us an offer thus large: “Search all the
generations of men since the Fall of our father Adam, find one man
that hath done one action which hath passed from him pure, without
any stain or blemish at all, and for that one man's only action neither
man nor angel should feel the torments which are prepared for both,”
do you think that this ransom to deliver men and angels could be found
to be among the sons of men? The best things which we do have
somewhat in them to be pardoned.’1
That witness is true. For my part I am persuaded the more light we
have, the more we see our own sinfulness; the nearer we get to heaven,
the more we are clothed with humility. In every age of the church you
will find it true, if you will study biographies, that the most eminent
saints — men like Bradford, Rutherford and M’Cheyne — have always
been the humblest men.
On the other hand, I ask my readers to observe how deeply thankful
we ought to be for the glorious gospel of the grace of God. There is a
remedy revealed for man’s need, as wide and broad and deep as man’s
disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin and study its nature, origin,
power, extent and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the
almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ.
Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded. Yes; in the
everlasting covenant of redemption, to which Father, Son and Holy
Ghost are parties; in the Mediator of that covenant, Jesus Christ the
righteous, perfect God and perfect Man in one Person; in the work that
He did by dying for our sins and rising again for our justification; in the
offices that He fills as our Priest, Substitute, Physician, Shepherd and
Advocate; in the precious blood He shed which can cleanse from all sin;
in the everlasting righteousness that He brought in; in the perpetual
intercession that He carries on as our Representative at God’s right
hand; in His power to save to the uttermost the chief of sinners, His
willingness to receive and pardon the vilest, His readiness to bear with
the weakest; in the grace of the Holy Spirit which He plants in the
hearts of all His people, renewing, sanctifying and causing old things to
pass away and all things to become new — in all this (and oh, what a
brief sketch it is!) — in all this, I say, there is a full, perfect and
complete medicine for the hideous disease of sin. Awful and
tremendous as the right view of sin undoubtedly is, no one need faint and
despair if he will take a right view of Jesus Christ at the same time. No
wonder that old Flavel ends many a chapter of his admirable Fountain
of Life with the touching words: ‘Blessed be God for Jesus Christ.’
In bringing this mighty subject to a close, I feel that I have only
touched the surface of it. It is one which cannot be thoroughly handled
in a paper like this. He that would see it treated fully and exhaustively
must turn to such masters of experimental theology as Owen and
Burgess and Manton and Charnock and the other giants of the Puritan
school. On subjects like this there are no writers to be compared to the
Puritans. It only remains for me to point out some practical uses to
which the whole doctrine of sin may be profitably turned in the present
day.
a. I say, then, in the first place, that a scriptural view of sin is one
of the best antidotes to that vague, dim, misty, hazy kind of theology
which is so painfully current in the present age. It is vain to shut our
eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity
nowadays which you cannot declare positively unsound, but which,
nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the
pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably ‘something
about Christ and something about grace and something about faith and
something about repentance and something about holiness’, but it is
not the real ‘thing as it is’ in the Bible. Things are out of place and out
of proportion. As old Latimer would have said, it is a kind of
‘minglemangle’, and does no good. It neither exercises influence on daily
conduct, nor comforts in life, nor gives peace in death; and those who
hold it often awake too late to find that they have got nothing solid
under their feet. Now I believe the likeliest way to cure and mend this
defective kind of religion is to bring forward more prominently the old
scriptural truth about the sinfulness of sin. People will never set their
faces decidedly towards heaven and live like pilgrims, until they really
feel that they are in danger of hell. Let us all try to revive the old
teaching about sin in nurseries, in schools, in training colleges, in
universities. Let us not forget that ‘the law is good if we use it
lawfully’, and that ‘by the law is the knowledge of sin’ (1 Tim. 1:8; Rom.
3:20; 7:7). Let us bring the law to the front and press it on men’s
attention. Let us expound and beat out the Ten Commandments and
show the length and breadth and depth and height of their
requirements. This is the way of our Lord in the sermon on the mount. We
cannot do better than follow His plan. We may depend upon it, men
will never come to Jesus and stay with Jesus and live for Jesus, unless
they really know why they are to come and what is their need. Those
whom the Spirit draws to Jesus are those whom the Spirit has
convinced of sin. Without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to
come to Jesus and follow Him for a season, but they will soon fall away
and return to the world.
b. In the next place, a scriptural view of sin is one of the best
antidotes to the extravagantly broad and liberal theology which is so
much in vogue at the present time. The tendency of modern thought is
to reject dogmas, creeds and every kind of bounds in religion. It is
thought grand and wise to condemn no opinion whatsoever, and to
pronounce all earnest and clever teachers to be trustworthy, however
heterogeneous and mutually destructive their opinions may be.
Everything, forsooth, is true and nothing is false! Everybody is right and
nobody is wrong! Everybody is likely to be saved and nobody is to be
lost! The atonement and substitution of Christ, the personality of the
devil, the miraculous element in Scripture, the reality and eternity of
future punishment, all these mighty foundation-stones are coolly tossed
overboard, like lumber, in order to lighten the ship of Christianity and
enable it to keep pace with modern science. Stand up for these great
verities, and you are called narrow, illiberal, old-fashioned and a
theological fossil! Quote a text, and you are told that all truth is not
confined to the pages of an ancient Jewish book, and that free inquiry
has found out many things since the book was completed! Now, I know
nothing so likely to counteract this modern plague as constant clear
statements about the nature, reality, vileness, power and guilt of sin. We
must charge home into the consciences of these men of broad views,
and demand a plain answer to some plain questions. We must ask them
to lay their hands on their hearts, and tell us whether their favourite
opinions comfort them in the day of sickness, in the hour of death, by
the bedside of dying parents, by the grave of a beloved wife or child.
We must ask them whether a vague earnestness, without definite
doctrine, gives them peace at seasons like these. We must challenge
them to tell us whether they do not sometimes feel a gnawing
‘something’ within, which all the free inquiry and philosophy and
science in the world cannot satisfy. And then we must tell them that
this gnawing ‘something’ is the sense of sin, guilt and corruption, which
they are leaving out in their calculations. And, above all, we must tell
them that nothing will ever make them feel rest, but submission to the
old doctrines of man’s ruin and Christ’s redemption and simple
childlike faith in Jesus.
c. In the next place, a right view of sin is the best antidote to that
sensuous, ceremonial, formal kind of Christianity, which has swept over
England like a flood in the last twenty-five years, and carried away so
many before it. I can well believe that there is much that is attractive in
this system of religion, to a certain order of minds, so long as the
conscience is not fully enlightened. But when that wonderful part of
our constitution called conscience is really awake and alive, I find it
hard to believe that a sensuous ceremonial Christianity will thoroughly
satisfy us. A little child is easily quieted and amused with gaudy toys
and dolls and rattles, so long as it is not hungry; but once let it feel the
cravings of nature within, and we know that nothing will satisfy it but
food. Just so it is with man in the matter of his soul. Music and flowers
and candles and incense and banners and processions and beautiful
vestments and confessionals and man-made ceremonies of a
semiRomish character may do well enough for him under certain conditions.
But once let him ‘awake and arise from the dead’, and he will not rest
content with these things. They will seem to him mere solemn triflings
and a waste of time. Once let him see his sin, and he must see his
Saviour. He feels stricken with a deadly disease, and nothing will satisfy
him but the great Physician. He hungers and thirsts, and he must have
nothing less than the bread of life. I may seem bold in what I am about
to say, but I fearlessly venture the assertion that four-fifths of the
semi-Romanism of the last quarter of a century would never have
existed if English people had been taught more fully and clearly the
nature, vileness and sinfulness of sin.
d. In the next place, a right view of sin is one of the best antidotes
to the overstrained theories of perfection of which we hear so much in
these times. I shall say but little about this, and in saying it I trust I shall
not give offence. If those who press on us perfection mean nothing
more than an all-round consistency, and a careful attention to all the
graces which make up the Christian character, reason would that we
should not only bear with them, but agree with them entirely. By all
means let us aim high. But if men really mean to tell us that here in this
world a believer can attain to entire freedom from sin, live for years in
unbroken and uninterrupted communion with God, and feel for
months together not so much as one evil thought, I must honestly say
that such an opinion appears to me very unscriptural. I go even further.
I say that the opinion is very dangerous to him that holds it, and very
likely to depress, discourage and keep back inquirers after salvation. I
cannot find the slightest warrant in God’s Word for expecting such
perfection as this while we are in the body. I believe the words of our
fifteenth Article are strictly true: that ‘Christ alone is without sin; and
that all we, the rest, though baptized and born again in Christ, offend in
many things; and if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us.’ To use the language of our first homily,
‘There be imperfections in our best works: we do not love God so much
as we are bound to do, with all our heart, mind and power; we do not
fear God so much as we ought to do; we do not pray to God but with
many and great imperfections. We give, forgive, believe, live and hope
imperfectly; we speak, think and do imperfectly; we fight against the
devil, the world and the flesh imperfectly. Let us, therefore, not be
ashamed to confess plainly our state of imperfection.’ Once more I
repeat what I have said: the best preservative against this temporary
delusion about perfection which clouds some minds — for such I hope I
may call it — is a clear, full, distinct understanding of the nature,
sinfulness and deceitfulness of sin.
e. In the last place, a scriptural view of sin will prove an admirable
antidote to the low views of personal holiness, which are so painfully
prevalent in these last days of the church. This is a very painful and
delicate subject, I know, but I dare not turn away from it. It has long
been my sorrowful conviction that the standard of daily life among
professing Christians in this country has been gradually falling. I am
afraid that Christ-like charity, kindness, good temper, unselfishness,
meekness, gentleness, good nature, self-denial, zeal to do good and
separation from the world are far less appreciated than they ought to be
and than they used to be in the days of our fathers.
Into the causes of this state of things I cannot pretend to enter fully
and can only suggest conjectures for consideration. It may be that a
certain profession of religion has become so fashionable and
comparatively easy in the present age that the streams which were once
narrow and deep have become wide and shallow, and what we have
gained in outward show we have lost in quality. It may be that the vast
increase of wealth in the last twenty-five years has insensibly
introduced a plague of worldliness and self-indulgence and love of ease into
social life. What were once called luxuries are now comforts and
necessaries, and self-denial and ‘enduring hardness’ are consequently
little known. It may be that the enormous amount of controversy
which marks this age has insensibly dried up our spiritual life. We have
too often been content with zeal for orthodoxy and have neglected the
sober realities of daily practical godliness. Be the causes what they may,
I must declare my own belief that the result remains. There has been of
late years a lower standard of personal holiness among believers than
there used to be in the days of our fathers. The whole result is that the
Spirit is grieved and the matter calls for much humiliation and searching
of heart.
As to the best remedy for the state of things I have mentioned, I
shall venture to give an opinion. Other schools of thought in the
churches must judge for themselves. The cure for evangelical churchmen,
I am convinced, is to be found in a clearer apprehension of the nature
and sinfulness of sin. We need not go back to Egypt, and borrow
semi-Romish practices in order to revive our spiritual life. We need not
restore the confessional, or return to monasticism or asceticism.
Nothing of the kind! We must simply repent and do our first works. We
must return to first principles. We must go back to ‘the old paths’. We
must sit down humbly in the presence of God, look the whole subject
in the face, examine clearly what the Lord Jesus calls sin, and what the
Lord Jesus calls doing His will. We must then try to realize that it is
terribly possible to live a careless, easy-going, half-worldly life, and yet
at the same time to maintain evangelical principles and call ourselves
evangelical people! Once let us see that sin is far viler and far nearer to
us, and sticks more closely to us than we supposed, and we shall be led,
I trust and believe, to get nearer to Christ. Once drawn nearer to Christ,
we shall drink more deeply out of His fulness, and learn more
thoroughly to ‘live the life of faith’ in Him, as St Paul did. Once taught
to live the life of faith in Jesus, and abiding in Him, we shall bear more
fruit, shall find ourselves more strong for duty, more patient in trial,
more watchful over our poor weak hearts, and more like our Master in
all our little daily ways. Just in proportion as we realize how much
Christ has done for us, shall we labour to do much for Christ. Much
forgiven, we shall love much. In short, as the apostle says, ‘With open
face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into
the same image . . . even as by the Spirit of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:18).
Whatever some may please to think or say, there can be no doubt
that an increased feeling about holiness is one of the signs of the times.
Conferences for the promotion of ‘spiritual life’ are becoming common
in the present day. The subject of ‘spiritual life’ finds a place on
congress platforms almost every year. It has awakened an amount of
interest and general attention throughout the land for which we ought
to be thankful. Any movement, based on sound principles, which helps
to deepen our spiritual life and increase our personal holiness, will be a
real blessing to the Church of England. It will do much do draw us
together and heal our unhappy divisions. It may bring down some fresh
outpouring of the grace of the Spirit, and be ‘life from the dead’ in
these later times. But sure I am, as I said in the beginning of this paper,
we must begin low, if we would build high. I am convinced that the
first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize
more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.
