\ All depends on our maintaining the inviolability of the will ;
and for finite beings a will is no will which cannot choose evil.
1 T1\A Lift of R. W. Dale, 314. » C. E. Jetferson, Things Fundamental, 234.
j^ THE LAMB OF GOD
If admits that, but says that the continued rebellion of any
is irreconcilable with the triumph of God's will and love, then I say that the present rebellion of any is likewise inconsistent with the same. While that awful fact of sin is staring you in the face, you cannot weave theories for the future that wdll hold water, except by the German dodge of refining sin into a lesser kind of necessary good, which is the very devil.^
^ One night some years ago in a University town there was a meeting of the White Cross Society. The meeting was over, one of the members had argued that sin was not natural, and at the close one of the medical professors, gathering a group of students around him, said, " That's gammon ! The sin you have heard of to-night is natiural," and the students to a man hissed him out of the room.^
I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Eight as a Eibstone Pippin!" But it lied.^
(4) According to Jesus, there is nothing lerrible in the world but .sin. It is the thing to be shunned, feared, hated. If your ""right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out ; it is better to lose an eye than to do wrong. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better to have no right hand than to do wrong. Beware how you tempt others to sin ; it were better that a millstone should be hanged about a man's neck, and that the man should be cast into the midst of the sea, than that he should cause a human being to do wrong. That is not the language which we are apt to use, nor is it the feeling which is in our hearts. Many of us would commit a score of sins, rather than lose an eye or a hand. But to the mind of Jesus no loss which may come to the body is to be compared with the loss which comes to the soul by breaking the law of God. " Joy," He said, " shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." This feeling of Jesus was communicated to His disciples. His Apostles go to work with unflagging earnestness to root out the sins of men. Whenever St. Paul writes of sin, his language becomes terribly earnest and intense. Sin to him is no shadow, it is an awful reality. He speaks to his converts in words which sound like the blast of a bugle. " Put on the whole armour of God,
^ Life and Letters of Fenton J. A. H&rt, i. 326.
2 George Adam Smith, The Life of Henry Drummond, 471,
8 H. Belloc, Verses, 81.
ST. JOHxN I. 29 79
that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."
^ Tt could not have been a trifle that started the great drops of biood from the body of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane, or that caused Him His exceeding sorrow on the tree. Great natures cannot weep blood but on great occasions. There must, then, have been something terrible about this moral putrescence which is called sin. It was no speck on the surface ; it was poison in the blood. The tones heard at Golgotha are not the harsh tones of vengeance ; there is no scream of fury ; no thunder of cursing ; there is a wail of sorrow, deep, loud, long, as if the very heart of God had broken. It is the agony of love; it is the paroxysm of a lacerated and dying spirit. It was love that had failed in life, determined to succeed in death. It was dying innocence struggling with dead guilt.^
2. The sin of the world. — The word "world" is one of St. John's words. It appears on almost every page of his writings. It fetands out prominently both in his Gospel and in his Epistles. What, then, was his conception of the world ? There are two words in Scripture used to denote the world. There is the word " kosmos." This means the world under the condition of space. There is the word " aeon," which means the world under the condition of time. The latter word is translated sometimes " age " or " epoch " or " dispensation," and it is this word that is used and never the other when the end of the world is spoken of. But the other word " kosmos " is the word referred to here. What is its meaning? Its first and earliest meaning is the sum total of material things, their order, their beauty, symmetry, law. But this world is never represented as sinful, only as unmoral. Then into this framework of kosmos man is set. It was made for him. It was kept in existence for him, and so the world comes to mean, next, the material universe of which man is the moral centre. Then it comes to be applied to the men themselves, the sum total of humanity who live and move and have their being in this material framework. But man takes the world and uses it without reference to the Giver. He was put into it as a steward, but instead of faithfully recognizing the true owner, he appropriates the proceeds for his own purposes. Hence comes the next idea of the world. It is humanity separated from God. From