(2) Take a less obvious sin. Take Resentfulness. Suppose that a man is natui'ally resentful and unforgiving. He may, in spite of this, have a great number of excellences, very high views, great self-devotion to God's service, great faith, great sanctity. I can fancy such a person almost arguing himself out of his own con- viction, that he is fostering the secret sin in question, from his consciousness of his own integrity, and his devotional spirit in the general round of his duties. His sin may have ten thousand palliations; it may be disguised by fair names; it affects the conscience only now and then, for a moment, and that is all ; the pang is soon over. The pang is momentary, but the ease and satisfaction and harmony of mind, arising from the person's exact performance of his general duties, are abiding guests within him. He forgets, that in spite of this harmony between all within and all without for twenty-three hours of the day, there is one subject, now and then recurring, which jars with his mind, — there is just
^ J. H. Atkinson.
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one string out of tune. Some particular person has injured him or dishonoured him, and a few minutes of each day, or of each week, are given to the indulgence of harsh, unforgiving thoughts, which at first he suspected were what they really are, sinful, but which he has gradually learned to palliate, or rather account for, on other principles, to refer to other motives, to justify on religious or other grounds. Solomon says, " Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour; so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour."
(3) Take that sin which is specially referred to in the text. It is the sin of omission, the sin of not doing. The children of Reuben, of Gad, and of Manasseh, are warned that their sin will find them out if they do not cross the Jordan in company with their kinsfolk, if they simply sit still in their own fields and vineyards on its eastern bank. And let us not forget what the Lord has said concerning the judgment in the day when He shall come in His glory. He tells us that in that day He will separate men as a shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats ; that He will set the one on His right hand and the other on His left ; and that to those on His left hand He will say — " Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. These shall go away into eternal punishment." But who are " these " upon whom such a doom is pronounced ? What had they done? They had done nothing. And that was their sin, and for that they are punished. Christ, identifying Himself with a suffering and needy humanity, says — " I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me."
III.
The Entrance of the Gospel.
1, We are under a Dispensation of grace, and are blessed with a certain suspension of this awful law of nataral religion. The blood of Christ, as St. John says, is of such wonderful efficacy as to " cleanse us from all sin " ; to interpose between our sin and its
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punishment, and to wipe out the former before the latter haa overtaken us.
^ The past is not, in any effective sense, irrevocable. We may yet make it, in large measure, what we will. For detached experiences are in themselves mere unintelligible fragments. It is when they are taken as parts of a whole that they have their meaning. And what is the whole of which our past is a part ? Is that irrevocably fixed beyond our control ? Nay, our past as well as our future shall be what we shall make it. It is a fragment that awaits interpretation, nay, awaits its full being, its true creation, from the whole.^
2. We are very apt to compare the laws of the material world and the laws of the spiritual world ; and, when we detach some analogies, we are ready to identify the two. HappUy, the laws of the one are not the laws of the other. If the laws of the spiritual world were the same as those of the natural world, we should all inevitably perish. Our sin would be beyond remedy, and infalUbly find us out to its bitterest conclusions. If you touch fire, you will invariably be burned. If you cast yourself from a precipice, you will certainly be broken to pieces. The laws of the natural world operate inexorably. And, no doubt, just because we have a mental constitution, there are there also laws which operate regularly. But because one of the laws of our mind is that we are free and can will, and because we are in the hands of a great God who is also free and merciful, and can introduce a higher law than even the law of our constitution, we have hope. It is one of the laws of our nature, that that in us which we may call our self can be detached, as it were, from our nature, and set up against it, so as to resist it in its evil, and command it. And if this, which we call the self in us, be enfeebled through evil, and unable of itself to rise up against sin, the influence of God operating through the life and history of Christ can awaken it, and animate it with a Divine power — Christ dwelling in our hearts.