was one window less, and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In
, Jean Ingelow's poem " Divided," two friends, parted by a little
-rivulet across which they could clasp hands, walk on in the
I direction in which the stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes
l a brook, and the brook a river, and the river an arm of the sea,
: across which no voice can be heard and there is no passing. By
constant neglect to use our opportunity, we lose the power to
cross from sin to righteousness, until between the soul and
< God " there is a great gulf fixed " (Luke xvi. 26).
^ Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death : *' I do believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom of will as we have here, and that there, as here, he that turns to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow His creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the penitent. But I also believe that now is the accepted time, and that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too strong to break in this world or the other," And the following is the Quaker poet's verse : » Wordsworth. « W. C. E. Newboit.
ST. MARK 127
Though God be good and free be Heaven,
No force divine can love compel; And, though the song of sins forgiven
May sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of His voice
Eespects thy sanctity of will. He giveth day : thou hast thy choice
To walk in darkness still.
^ As soon as any organ falls into disuse, it degenerates, and finally is lost altogether. . . .In parasites the organs of sense degenerate. Marconi's wireless telegraphy requires an attuned " receiver." The " transmitter " sends out countless rays into space: only one capable of corresponding vibrations can under- stand them. The sinner may so destroy his receptivity, that the whole universe may be uttering God's truth, yet he be unable to hear a word of it. The Outlook : " If a man should put out his eyes, he could not see — nothing could make him see. So if a man should by obstinate wickedness destroy his power to believe in God's forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state. Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and so could not take God's forgiveness to himself."
^ Lowell's warning to the nation at the beginning of the Mexican War was only an echo of a profounder fact in the individual life of the soul :
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil
side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom
or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the
right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that
light.i
^ Throughout the physical world you may cure fevers, dropsies, fractures, derangements of vital organs ; you may violate all the multiplied economies that go to constitute the individual physical man, and rebound will bring forgiveness ; but there is a point beyond which if you go it will not, either in youth, in middle life, or in old age. Many a young man who spends himself until he has drained the fountain of vitality dry in youth is an old man at thirty ; he creeps and crawls at forty ; and at fifty, if he is alive, he is a wreck. Nature says : " I forgive * Lowell, The Present Crisis.
128 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
all manner of iniquity and transgression and sin to a man who does not commit the unpardonable sin," — for there is an un- pardonable sin, physically speaking, that is possible to every man. If a thousand pound weight fall upon a man so that it grinds the bones of his leg to powder, like flour, I should like to know the surgeon that could restore it to him. He may give him a sub- stitute in the form of wood or cork, but he cannot give him his leg again. There is an unpardonable sin that may be committed in connection with the lungs, with the heart, or with the head. They are strung with nerves as thick as beads on a string ; and up to a certain point of excess, or abuse of the nervous system, if you rebound there will be remission, and you will be put back, or nearly back, where you were before you transgressed nature's laws ; but beyond that point — it differs in different men, and in different parts of the same man — if you go on transgressing, and persist in transgressing, you will never get over the effect of it as long as you live. So men may go so far in sinning that there can be no salvation for them, their case being hopeless just in proportion to the degree in which they become moral imbeciles.^
IV. The Use.
1. There are three ways in which this sin may be regarded at the present day.
(1) As a Great Mistake. — It is part of that almost automatic punishment of sin (automatic, i.e. unless checked) in which God, who can release, unbind, and forgive, stands on one side, and \ allows the sin to work itself out. Surely we are face to face with the possibility of a great mistake, where a man gets so entirely out of sympathy with God that, where there is God, he can see only an evil spirit ; where there is goodness, he can see only malignity ; where there is mercy, he can see only cruel tyranny. The great mistake ! It begins, perhaps, in the will. Life is presented with all its fascinating material ; there is the deadly bias of disposition, while there is the make-weight of grace ; and the will gives in, appetite after appetite is pressed into the service, present enjoyment, present gratification, are everything ; the world is one great terrestrial paradise of enjoy-