Sin's First Manifestation

“And he sent than to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found Him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship Him also” — Matt. ii. 6.

There it is. Sin never reveals itself at the outset as sin; if it did, we should at once be repelled. If it came to the youth and said, “I am evil; follow me,” is there any youth in the nation who would obey it? The spell is broken when Satan declares himself to be Satan, when he says in so many words, “Fall down and worship me.” But when the tempter first comes to the soul he comes not in his own dress; he comes in the dress of virtue. So far from appearing as the solicitor to evil, he professes to be the ally of what is good and true. He proclaims not himself as the enemy of the Christ, but as one who would support and further the cause of Christ. The allurement of vice is its resemblance to virtue; it adorDS itself in borrowed robes. It assumes the counterfeit of that freedom which belongs only to the Spirit of the Master. It bids the youth say, “I do not care,” in counterfeit of that divine carelessness which has cast its burdens on the Lord. It offers him a prospect of self-abandonment in counterfeit of the Christian self-surrender. It tells him to break the shackles of authority and come out into the open plain, in counterfeit of that holier consciousness, “I am dead to the law that I might live unto God.”

My soul, distrust the seeming resemblances between the kingdom of Herod and the kingdom of Christ. There is not, there never can be, an alliance between them; their likeness lies on the surface. License is not freedom; libertinism is not liberty; recklessness is not conquest of care; self-will is not manliness. Go and search diligently for the young child, and when thou hast found Him, thou wilt find that Herod could never have worshipped Him. Their unlikeness will grow the longer they stand side by side. Herod asks from thee at the beginning only a trifling tribute, but he concludes by proving thee a slave; Christ at the outset demands thy heart, thy strength, thine all, but He ends by making thee free. It is not Herod, but the star of unselfish hope that can lead thee to the place where the young Child lies.