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utterly from even the possibility of blessedness. And as for the Romans —
On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
(2) Nor was the Jew. So far from feeling himself sinful, he looked on himself alone as being the just, the upright, the chosen. He spoke with contemptuous disgust of the Gentiles as sinners and dogs and swine. Of course, in a vague general way, he as- sented to vague general confessions, as when the High Priest laid his hands on the head of the scapegoat, and said, " 0 God, the God of Israel, pardon our iniquities, our transgressions, and our sins." But, on the whole, in the Pharisaic epoch, which began even in the days of Ezra, the Jews were infinitely satisfied with them- selves. They held (as the Talmud often shows us) that no Jew could possibly be rejected ; that God looked on him with absolute favouritism ; that the meanest son of Israel was a prince of the kings of the earth. The pride which caused this serene uncon- sciousness of their own guilt — the fact that they so little recognized the plague of their own hearts, was the worst thing about them. They knew not that they were miserable, poor, blind, and naked. It was the self-induced callosity of formalism. It was the penal blindness of moral self-conceit. " Are we blind also ? " asked the astonished Pharisees of Christ. And He said unto them, " If ye were blind ye would have no sin; but now you say, We see, therefore your sin remaineth." The fact, then, that Jew and Gentile alike were ignorant of their own guilty condition was the deadliest element of their danger. For
When we in our viciousness grow hard — 0 misery on't ! — the wise gods seel our eyes ; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut To our confusion.
Tf It seems to me that people get into the way of identifying sin with one kind of sin — the sin of the outcasts — and forget the sins of character, of the Pharisees, and of the wicked, wise conspirators against human good and happiness, who are
ROMANS in. 23, 24 265
eminently the Bible type of the sinners who have everything to fear.1
A soul made weak by its pathetic want
Of just the first apprenticeship to sin
Which thenceforth makes the sinning soul secure
From all foes save itself, souls' truliest foe, —
Since egg turned snake needs fear no serpentry.2
3. The Apostle proves that all have sinned by pointing to the facts around him. The facts of experience prove it still. Take the irreligious world — the vast masses who do not even profess religion, who never set foot in a place of worship. Take the vast army of unhappy drunkards, reeling through a miserable life to a dishonoured grave. Take the countless victims of sins of im- purity. Take trade and commerce, with its adulterations, its dishonesties, its reckless greed, its internecine struggles between capital and toil. Are these mere words, or are they indisputable facts ? Is there no gambling ? Are there no wild, greedy, dishonest speculations ? Is the common conversation of men what it should be ? Is the drink trade and its consequences an honour to us? Does God look with approval on the opium traffic ? Are the amusements of the nation satisfactory ? Can we regard with complacency the accessories of the turf ? Are the streets of London — reeking as they do with open and shameless temptation — what the streets of a Christian capital should be ? Would a Paul or an Elijah have had no burning words of scathing denunciation at what the stage and the opera sometimes offer to the rich, and the music-hall and the dancing-room to the poor ? How many of the rich understand what it is to be generous ? How many of the poor are alive to the duty and dignity of self- respect ? Are there no base and godless newspapers ? Did not a great statesman write but recently about " one of the thousands of lies, invented by knaves and believed by fools " ? Is the general tone of what is called society healthy — with its gossip, and its fashion, and its luxury, and its selfish acquiescence in the seething misery around ?
T[ It may seem somewhat extreme, which I will speak ; there- fore let every man judge of it, even as his own heart shall tell
1 Life and Letters of Dean Church, 265.
2 R. Browning, The Ring and the Book.
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him, and no otherwise ; I will but only make a demand : If God should yield to 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 that city should not be destroyed ; but, if God should make us an offer thus large, Search all the generations of men since the fall of your father Adam, find one man that hath done any one action, which hath past from him pure, without any stain or blemish at all ; and for that one man's one only action, neither man nor angel shall feel the torments which are prepared for both : do you think that this ransom, to deliver men and angels, would be found among the sons of men ? *