The Problem of Sin

The ugly face of sin pushes in everywhere. It has to be reckoned with by everybody. Sin is so ingrained in life that it is constantly being considered. It is one of the most practical of all problems, and one of the most personal, too. If a banker is engaging a new teller to be trusted with the bank’s funds he is obliged to think of certain phases of the sin question. If the manager of a great railroad is studydng how to operate the vast system to the best advantage of his directors, and for the pubHc’s safety and convenience, he is forced to study carefully the sin question, even though not from a moral standpoint.

If a mother and father are eager for their child to be strong and pure and intelligent they need to know something about the law of life, and the results of disobeying it. If a man would live long and hold his vigor; if a maiden would retain her beauty and gentleness of spirit; above all, if one would live a life pure and strong, pleasing to God and helpful to his generation, the problem of sin must be thought about and grasped, at least in part. And the earlier and more thorough the thinking the better.

In the English translation of an old Greek classic there occurs a remarkable sentence about sin. It is a strange little sentence of just six words, peculiar in its makeup and packed full of condensed vitality: “The wages of sin is death.” There are no adjectives, nor adverbs, nor other such qualifying words. There are just three hard, knotty, disagreeable nouns, “wages,” “sin,” “death”; with only enough other parts of speech to hold these securely together.

These nouns are the bones of the sentence; the other words the ligaments that hold the bones in place. There is no soft padding and rounding of flesh. The intensity of suppressed feeling underneath comes out in the very shortness and sharpness of both the sentence and each of its chief words. There is not even enough stopping on the way to give any coloring to these three rugged, sharp-edged words. Each comes blurting out, goes straight to the bull’s-eye of the target, and hits it with a sharp ringing noise — “The wages of sin is death.”

That is not true because it is written in this old Book of God. It is in the book because it is true. It had been written down in many other books before it found Paul’s pen here. Any breaking of the natural order of life brings a penalty; and the penalty is always a death penalty.

It has been written in the book of nature as with sharp chisel edge in flinty rock. In the State of Kentucky is a great cave. In the cave is a river flowing. In the river are fish. They are like other fish essentially with one exception, they have no eyes. There is an eye socket. But where the eyeball should be there is instead the withered-up carcass of an eyeball, or none at all. It is a law of life that what we do not use we lose. All of nature’s gifts are held by use. These fish did not use their eyes. In the absence of light they could not. And through lack of use persisted in for an untold length of time, they lost both the power of use and the organ of use. The wages of sin is death. Any breakage oi a law of life carries with it a penalty, and that penalty is always a death penalty.

That sentence has been written down very big with indelible ink in the book of nations. Years ago Spain was at the head of the great powers of the world. Her ships swept the seas victoriously and defiantly. But Spain as a nation broke one of the great laws of human life. It is a law of life written in the spirit of man that every man shall be free to worship God as he thinks to be right. Spain ruthlessly, with iron-clad fist, broke that law. She said to her sons, ‘’You shall worship not as you think best but as I decree.” Her sons showed the inherent greatness of the nation by refusing. And Spain stained her soil with the blood of thousands of her best sons. And Spain died as a first-class power, a second-class, a thirdclass, and more yet. Her proud position of leadership was lost. Her death was by suicide. The wages of sin is death. Failure to obey the great simple laws of life contains in itseK a sure penalty, a death penalty.

It has been written, and still is being written, in the lives of men, with letters many times traced in a living red. The Wizard of the North in Great Britain, splendid Walter Scott, felt keenly the sharp edge of debt and financial disgrace. He said imperiously to his great brain, “You shall pay these debts,” and greatly it responded to his whip. And the law of the body that sets limits to the work that may be done was broken, badly broken. And that great man began dying early, and that remarkable brain knew the death of its powers, before the last ebb of life had slipped from his body. The wages of sin is death. Disobedience of the law of life carries with it a knotted whip, whose cut and slash and sting always means a death of some sort.

Six Sides of Sin.

I ran through the Bible one time rather carefully and found there six words used for sin. I found the word sin itself. Sin, the word underneath our English, literally means missing the mark. Here is a shooting-target; a man stands with rifle up, taking aim; he presses the trigger and the little leaden bullet flies from the rifle’s mouth, but it doesn’t hit the centre of the target, the bull’s-eye; it goes off into one of the rings or clear outside the target. That is the literal meaning of sin. It is failing to hit that at which you have aimed. Let me ask you, softly, have you ever done that? Have you ever failed to hit the true mark of life at which you have aimed? I do not say you have, and I do not say the mark that somebody else has set up for you to reach. But, just now, as you see things yourself, have you ever failed to reach the true aim of a true life as you have thought of it yourself? once? just once back there somewhere? Because if you have that is sin, and sin earns wages, and the wages of sin is death.

There is a second word I found; the word transgression. It means simply going over a boundary lifie where you have no right to go. Here is a line at the side of your path. You have a right to be here in your own path. You have no right over beyond the line. There is a sign up, “No trespassing allowed.” But you go over that line to the other side. That is transgression.

May I ask you quietly, please — have you gone over the line in your conduct where you should not have gone? I do not mean just now the line that others may have set for you. But as you saw things yourself, the line that you regarded as the proper boundary line for a true, pure life. Have you? once? You pulled back again, maybe; but as you look back there’s a sure jog over the line there; it’s dented in, over and back; two obUques, is that so? I do not say it is; but as you see things yourself? Because if it is so that is transgression; and transgression is sin; and sin earns wages; and the wages of sin, I regret to remind you, is death.

The third word is iniquity; that is, un-equity, not equity, not equal. It thinks of the path of life as a level, even-faced road, without any breaks-down, no sags, no inequalities; all parts evenly up to a standard level. Whatever breaks that even level surface is un-equity, iniquity. May I ask you again, softly, just for yourself to hear, as you look back over the road of your life thus far, how does it look to you? Is there one sag-down back there? one place where it isn’t plumb up to the level which you have thought of as the right level? just one? Maybe more than one; but we are not talking about numbers just now, but about single facts; once so, did you say? Because if it be so that one break-down back there is iniquity, and iniquity is sin, and sin carried with it a return, and, I am very sorry to say, that return is death.

A fourth word I found in this strangely frank book is the word wickedness. Its old, first meaning seems to have been crookedness; that is, winding aside, turning away, falling back. It thinks of the path of conduct as a straight path without any curves or crooks or bends. To turn aside this way or that is wickedness. Would you kindly turn around for a few moments of steady looking? What sort of a line has your life made? Is there any zig-zag in it? any jog? maybe “not much” you say, but some? any?

a jog off once from the straight line? If so, that is described by this old word wickedness, and wickedness is sin, and sin is a wage-earner, and the wages to be paid in is, I much regret to say, death.

The fifth word that pushed its ugly face up into mine in these pages is the word guile. Guile means sneakiness, snakiness, trickiness. It means being one thing inside, and trying to have folks who see only the outer side think you’re something else. It means putting clean white-painted shutters up around your life so folks may think that’s what you are Uke clear through. How about that? Has the life always been a clear reflector of the motives and purposes within? If once back’ there somewhere there has been something of that sort, the intention to deceive another, that is guile, and guile is sin, and sin has wages, and the wages spells out the one word death.

There still is another word used, a very strange word that at first flush may seem to many to be quite too strong, a sort of an extreme putting of the thing. It is in the Revised Version. Jesus’ bosom friend, John, says *’sin is lawlessness.^^ It would sound a bit extreme to call some persons whom we know lawless; yet when the matter is sifted down to the controlHng spirit within, underneath, that is found to be the accurate word to use. For all true law is the expression of God’s will; all true law is the fine rhythmic

1 1. John 3: 4.

swing of God in action. And whatever is different from that, preferring our will to His, maybe in ignorance oftentimes of just how much that involves, that is against law, it is without law, and so lawless. May I ask you most softly yet — any of that in you? any preferring your own way when that dead-sets you against God’s will? a little? Because however little it may seem in our thought of size, that is lawlessness, and lawlessness is the very seed of sin, and sin carries with itself a result, and that result is called death.

Sin is not a disease, a moral disease, nor a misfortune, nor a weakness to be overlooked and maybe gradually overcome. It is an act of the will. When a man sets himself to do the thing that is not right, or to omit the thing that he should do, whether in imagination, or in his speech, or in action, that is the thing called sin.

Seven Facts about Sin.

Now this old sentence ties the word wages up tight to this word sin. There is a certain logical result of sin. It is put here in the simple commercial language of a man getting the proper return for his day’s work. Regarding sin’s wages there are seven simple facts to be noted; simple indeed but terrific in what they involve.

The first is this, that sin earns wages. Where there is sin there is a return coming back into the life where the sin is. There is a law of compensation in sin; something is due and owing to the man who has sinned. The second fact is that sin pays wages. There is no defalcation here. Sin never is bankrupt. It pays. It has a full purse, a heavy bank account, and pays what is due.

Sin insists on paying wages. A man may decline to receive. You may be quite willing to forgive the account, and call it square without any further exchanges. But there is always the other side to be reckoned with here, sin’s side. It insists on squaring every account. Its books are kept with painstaking accuracy.

I recall a man in an eastern city whom I knew well. He stood high in financial circles, in church and social circles for years. But all the years, as it afterwards proved, he had been untrue to his trust both in financial and in family relations. He stayed off payment for long, and when the crisis came stood it off a bit longer with legal processes, but though there was delay the payment was made finally. He had to receive what was due according to the law of men. Yet be it marked very keenly that the law of man’s making which compelled him to receive what was due had and has very marked limitations. Man’s law deals only with discovered sin, and then only when it can be technically proven. And such law can compel a man to receive only a certain portion of the due of wrong, according as men have prescribed. But sin itself is not so restricted. It deals with the actual thing known by the man who does it, and known only by him*

Sin’s payment works out insistently, pervasively, irresistibly, even as a fire unquenched reaches every bit of space within the sphere of its activity. Sin insists on paying wages. This man’s home was utterly broken up, his life companion suffered until her mental balance slipped, his standing among his fellows was wholly gone, his name was disgraced. When the gates of his prison-house were opened again for his bodily liberty, the stoutest of his chains refused to unloose and still held him in their cold, heavy grip. And yet when this much is said, it leaves the greater part unsaid.

The fourth fact to mark is a tremendous fact, intense, dramatic, graphic, even poetic, if such a word can be used of that which is most grimly prosaic. Yet it must be used, for there is a peculiar swing and rhythm to sin’s working here. It is this — sin pays its wages in kind. I mean that the pay is the same sort of stuff as the sin. That which returns into a man’s life is of a piece with the sin that started the return movement. You remember that the old Hebrew, Jacob, was a herdsman, in earlier life working under contract with his uncle. When the settlement period came Jacob was not paid in gold or silver or notes. He received in pay the sort of stuff he was handling all the time, sheep and goats and oxen. He was paid in kind. That is the meaning here.

Sin in the realm of the body brings a result in the body. The body is the open record of a man’s life, to him who can read it. There the skilled physician or the skilled surgeon reads plainly the habits of the life. Sin against the law of mental life brings its sure return in that which effects the mental powers. Sin in contact with others brings a chain of results affecting those others, and in turn those whom they affect. And this is intensified in proportion to a man’s relation to the community or state or nation. It is terribly true that no man sinneth unto himself. Sin is the most selfish of acts. It beslimes to some extent everyone we touch, whether we be conscious or unconscious of that touch.

This man Jacob knew bitterly the working of this old lajv of sin. He deceived his old father; he was deceived by his uncle Laban in the matter of his wife, and ten times over in the matter of his wages as herdsman. He wronged his brother; and his favorite son was wronged by his brothers, and that hurt the old man far more than though the wrong had been done to himself. He lied to his father; and was lied to by his sons. As a young man he used a kid in the heartless scheme to deceive his bUnd, aged father; and years after his sons used a kid to give good color to their attempt to deceive their father. The old man, broken in both body and spirit, knew with a bitter intimacy those last years that sin pays wages in kind. The sin breathes out its own spirit into the whole circle of one’s life, and ever returns grown stronger to bother the man who first set it free and sent it out.

Unloosing the Demons of Sin,

David committed a sin in secret. It was supposed to be unknown except to the one who joined him in it. Yet that lawless, utterly selfish act against the purity of life and of a home brought back big bitter wages. The frightful effects of it infected his own home, spread out into his kingdom, left his successor a horrid heritage, and has had a bad influence among men until this day, with the end not yet. The act itself was repeated with cruel variation within the circle of his own family. It led to the inhuman dyeing of his own hands with faithful outraged human blood. And that act in turn was repeated with heartbreaking variation within the family circle.

The man himself was badly hurt in more ways than one; his sense of right as a ruler was badly blurred. His favorite son, tainted with the lawless spirit of his father’s act, is received back into the home with no change of heart and with no rebuke for his conduct. That itself was a lawless act, hurtful to the son, and brought a very whirlwind of lawlessness that almost disrupted the kingdom, and that left a debt of blood and of bitter memory that long years did not fully pay.

The prodigal, received back into the home unrepentant, carried with him a hell of anarchy and suffering and heart-burnings. The violence that started in the king’s heart, and slew one of his own sons, stayed not until his favorite son fell under its ruthless hand, and left the old father heartbroken. That first brief act let loose a horrid horde of demons. Sin has a frightful contagion. Ah! this old warrior king, with his splendid talents and great traits of character, learned with a bitter tenacity of memory that sin pays wages in kind.

History tells of a certain portion of the world where two races were brought into intimate contact; a superior race and an inferior, and so remained for many years. The men of that superior race, taking advantage of their position of superiority, with many splendid exceptions, invaded the sanctity of the women of the inferior race, for passion’s sake. And for long years, through successive generations, the daughters of those injured women have been debauching the sons of those men, until that bit of country has been made red with precious human blood, and wet with bitterest human tears. And deep in the very family fibre of life there is woven inextricably in, the truth that sin pays wages in kind.

A fifth fact to mark is this: sin pays in instalments. The payments begin at once. The very immediate act of sin has in it the beginning of its results, and those results continue bit by bit, with a grimly patient faithfulness, at regular periods through the years. The human eye blurred by its own sin is not always able to see the results. The human mind dulled by its own decisions is not always keen enough to appreciate what is going on, until passing years pile up the results, and they are forced upon the attention, and gazed upon with wonder. And sometimes we hear talk about mysterious providences among religious folk, and of hard luck among others; but never a bit of suffering has come into any life but it could be traced back, were our knowledge full and our eyes keen enough, back step by step in regular logical sequence to some initial human act of wrong.

The sixth fact should be coupled with the fifth, the payment is in jull. There are no defalcations here; no settlement by agreement of fifty cents on the dollar. But dollar for dollar, and each full weight, and with full measure of cents, is paid. No amount of reluctance on our part, no attempt at shirking will make any difference. A man is very apt to grow generous here. He will forgive the account due him. He is even eager to “call the thing square.” “No,” this inexorable paymaster sternly says, “you will step up and receive the full stint of what has been earned.”

A French writer has described a scene in the old province of Brittany, that juts out into the sea on the west of France. A man was walking along the seashore on a bright afternoon enjoying the air and sea. Above the sky was blue, the sun shining, the air invigorating, and the view off very beautiful. And the man walks along leisurely, thinking only of the enjoyment of his surroundings. He does notice absent-mindedly that his feet sink into the sand rather much. Then they sink a little more, until he begins to think it strange; then all at once it flashes upon him that the tide is out, and he is in a bed of quicksand.

With the instinctive dread of a native, he knows well what that means, and instantly turns in horror towards the mainland to escape. But his quicker, intenser movements make his feet sink in deeper, up to the ankles. He plunges madly this way and that, calling wildly for help. But there is nobody to hear, and the more he plunges the deeper he sinks. Now he turns to the left, seeking to find a footing beyond the edge of the treacherous bed of quicksand. And now frantically to the right, and now up towards mainland, but he only sinks down the deeper into the smooth, slippery sand. Now the sand is to his knees, and now over his loins; then its pressure crowds in about his vitals, while he stretches out his arms wildly and shrieks piteously for help, and the pressure is seen in the blood coming from mouth and nose and ears. And now only the head is above the smooth level of pretty sand, and now just a pair of glaring, blood-shot eyes, and now a tuft of hair. Then only a smooth stretch of pretty shining sand. And above the sky is blue, the sun shining, the air so fine, and the sea laughing.

That is the working of nature’s law. It is true ahke of all her laws. Here it was the law of gravitation that ruthlessly, mercilessly, inexorably drew down the man who had given himself unwittingly over to its power. The same action marks this law of sin of which we are talking.

Whoever comes within the sphere of its power will find it working in the same quiet, sure, merciless way. Law knows no mercy. Oh! yes, there is a provision sometimes made in human law for certain days of grace in meeting financial obligation. But it simply means that, if the brief time allotted find you unready with the money, the house may be sold from over your head, and you left in the cold night unsheltered. That is surely great grace.

Here in this old tale of the native of Brittany is an illustration of the working of law, the logical sequence of cause and result. With slow pace, bit by bit, with mercilessly sure tread the law of sin works out its logical way endlessly. Sin pays in instalments, but in full, with a final fulness beyond anybody’s power to compute.

There is a seventh fact to be noted here, that should be marked very keenly, and not forgotten. Sin is self-executive. That is to say, every sin pays its own bills. Sin keeps an independent bank account and checks out all its own payments. And it can be said very positively that there is no result of sin except that which works out of itself. Yet that is terrific beyond the power of the imagination to picture, or of words to tell. You may, if you choose to, leave God out of your thinking about this. Yet that does not affect the tremendous fact put down here. Sin has bound up in itself all the terrific consequences that ever come. The act of sin unlooses the demons bound within, and they do but carry out to the full what the man began. Sin works automatically. It is self-executive.

The Logical Result of Sin.

This cold, calm, strange sentence says that the wages of sin is death. What is death? There is no question much harder to answer. I can tell what it is 7iot, and that will help to clear the ground a bit. It is not the passing of life out of the body merely. That is the thing we all think of first and most when death is spoken of. Yet that is a very small item, a mere detail of death, painful in itself, and with distressing results to those who tarry behind, but the smallest part of death. And death Js not ceasing to be, cessation of existence. That cannot be. A spirit does not cease to be and cannot, and man is essentially a spirit-being. Good were it for some men if death meant for them an utter cessation of existence.

And it can be said with great positiveness that death is not arbitrary punishment meted out by God. God has sometimes been held up to criticism as a cruel, unfeeling sort of tyrant, taking pleasure in dealing out punishment to sinful men; not so much of late years as formerly, but still a good bit; always too much. Any is too much and a slander upon Him. We borrow our ideas of punishment from men, and among men punishment is very largely arbitrary. That is, it is decided upon, chosen out to be inflicted upon the guilty one. A child in school disobeys some rule and perhaps persists in the disobedience. The teacher decides upon some punishment, either whipping, or detention, or extra work, or to be deprived of some privilege. That of course is arbitrary, discretionary, decided as the teacher judges to be best. A soldier breaks the rules of camp, or of the discipline of army life. His officer decides what punishment shall be inflicted upon him. A man is found guilty of an offence, and in most instances there is discretion with the judge to decide what punishment he shall suffer.

Let it be said very plainly that death as a result of sin is not in any way like that. It is the logical result of sin. It is included in the sin. Sin and death are only different parts, or phases, or stages of the same thing. Sin is death begun. Death is sin finished, worked out to its conclusion. Sin is death in the green; death is sin dead ripe. Sin is the seed; death is the fruitage of that seed. Death is the logical culmination of sin, the final stage. Death begins with the beginning of sin. All unsuspected by those standing by, the beginnings of the pallor of death have already come where sin is done.

All unconsciously to the man committing the sin, the tide of life has already begun its faint, imperceptible ebb. All living men are partially dead. Death is a gradual state until finally complete. In its essence death is separation from God. All life is the breath of God. Sin is cutting one’s self off from God. It is like gripping a man by the throat with tightening clutch until the breath of life departs. Sin is choosing to leave God out. The very act cuts ofif the source of life. The grammar of the verb to sin is peculiar to itself. It is this: present tense, to sin; first future tense, following instantly on the present, to suffer; in the second future tense the verb changes its form, it becomes a noun — hell.

That hateful, ugly word hell, which the lips utter only by compulsion when they must, for the sheer pain of it, is simply the name given to the place where death reigns; where God has been excluded. They who prefer to leave God out will gather together at some time by a natural moral affinity, or gravitation. The name used for such meeting-place in this old Book is that hurting word hell. Hell is death’s abode. God shut out, no life, death, death regnant — that is hell.

Is there anybody listening here who has not sinned? If so, I’ll wait a moment for you to withdraw, please, for to-day’s talk is not for you. We all seem to be staying in. Well, then, by our own confession, we are under the action of this law of sin. There is a death sentence written over every face here. Sometimes it can be plainly seen. Sometimes to our dim eyes there seems to be no suggestion of such a thing. But were our eyes keener to read spirit-lines and spirit-fact, we would find through the flashing eye, the clear ruddy skin, the firm rounded flesh, a distinct tracing of this strange thing called death.

I have no doubt that many, maybe most, of these listening so kindly and patiently are members of the Christian Church. But as I run my eye over your faces I cannot say who are church members and who are not. And I am glad for the purpose of this talk to-day that I cannot. For this law of sin recognizes no such distinctions. There has been a thoughtless thinking, without it being said in so many words, that being within the secure walls of church membership shields one from the action of this law of sin. But that is not so. Whoever is thinking so, maybe half-unconsciously thinking so, is befooling himself here. This law of life which is a law of death applies fully wherever there is life, and — sin.

Well, then, we are all under the action of this law and all under sentence of death, sin’s logical conclusion. What can we do about it? Of ourselves we cannot do a thing to reUeve the situation. The thing we need is hf e in place of death; the utter cutting out of the seeds of death and the putting in of new seed, the seed of life, a new life. There are only three ways that anything can be gotten, that is, proper ways: by inheritance, by purchase, and by gift. We have lost our inheritance of life. It has been forfeited by our alliance with the one thing that is utterly opposed to life. There is not enough wealth in the vaults of London and New York, Paris and St. Petersburg, nor in the mines, to buy any. The wealthy people are merely money-wealthy, not lifewealthy, so far as their gold is concerned. And we have none for ourselves, much less to give away. What shall we do? We are all in bad shape. It is a blind alley we are all heading up in. Would it sound any better, or less bad, if instead of “blind alley” I used a foreign word for it, cul-de-sac, and hid the ugliness of the truth behind that? Better just use blunt old English, that the plain truth come more plainly, bluntly home.

The Sinless Man.

But here steps one upon the scene of life from another sphere — Jesus. By His own word, and by the frank confession of those who know Him most intimately, He is free from sin. The Jew who so foully betrayed, and the Roman who so unfairly gave sentence of death, agreed fully in this. Being without sin, He is not under action of this law. He steps on the scene. And in effect He says, ‘*It grieves me to the quick that this great race of splendid m.en is in such bad shape.” But mark you keenly, and let the truth here be said with the greatest reverence, not even Jesus the Son of God can change the working of this law of life. He came not to break but to fulfil.

What can He do? This is what He did do. He wxnt down, of His own voluntary accord, went down to where men’s sin had driven man. He tasted death. Tasted? aye, drained its dregs to a bitterness not known by any other before or since. He went down into the throat of death, into the mouth of hell, and seizing death by the throat throttled it, and then rose by the moral gravity of His own being up to a new life, a deathless life for all men. And now Jesus offers that new deathless life as a free gift to all who will accept it, and accept with it the conditions of life.

But will you kindly note as keenly as you ever noted anything that there are three qualifying facts that belong in here. There has been a sort of a weak sentimentaUsm, common in some quarters, about salvation through Jesus, as though by some sort of legerdemain all the evil results of sin were at once wiped out, and all the benefits of the new life come fully in by means of an assent to Jesus’ offer of salvation. It does seem sometimes as though there were those who say, “We can do about as we please, indulge in sin as suits us now, and then after a while, — well, there’s Jesus, He’s loving; God is love. He is too loving ever to let anyone be lost. We’ll just line up that way and pull through all right.” I do not mean that I have ever heard anybody put it so bluntly, and baldly, and irreverently as that into words. But I have surely heard a great many say it loudly with their lives. Better, maybe, if they had put the language of their lives into the language of the lips, that its very baldness might shock them into thinking of the truth.

The first qualifying fact to note is this: accepting Jesus does not nullify nor neutralize the results in this life of past sins. That man who lost his arm through a drunken debauch will remain so, without the arm, crippled in body and in activity to the end of the years. Those years absorbed in selfish pleasure-seeking are lost forever, and the mental strength that was not held and matured by earnest effort can never again be gotten. The grave of the past never gives up its dead, only their spectres to trouble and haunt.

The broken home circle can never be restored. A new one may be made, but never the old. That saintly mother, grief-stricken in heart through somebody’s sin, broken in strength and shattered in her years — that is not changed. There may be some softening of after-years, but the old deep scars upon heart and body and life are never removed. Time softens greatly where conditions are changed, but under all remains the old wound, and it pains’ sharply when a bit of damp weather comes. The man who through dissipation has depleted his vitahty never will be, never can be, either in body, or in his mental powers, or in his spiritual perception and grasp, what he was meant to be, and would have been. The bird with the broken pinion never does soar as high again. Its broken wing has forever broken the strength and swiftness of his flight.

The man may be fully forgiven, and blessedly changed, and wondrously used, but never can he be the man God meant, nor be used in service as he could have been had God had the use of his full, unstunted, unwasted powers. Selfishness is a spirit-paralysis. The powers never fully recover. The daily grubbing for gold, with no high spiritmotive gripping and sweetening, forges a finely woven network about all of the powers. And however the life may afterwards be surrendered to Jesus the hampering movement is never wholly gone. It has been rutted deep into the cellular tissue of the body.

The heart may become wholly, blessedly pure, the motives and impulses all sweetly and fragrantly cleansed, but the mark of the past is dented deep in the body, the energies, the activities, the outlook. This is the simple, sad, tragic truth. It should all be said in softest tone of lowered voice, for we are talking of our brothers; and said too with a hush of shame over the spirit, for we are talking about ourselves here together. But it should be said, very distinctly, with the words pronounced clear and sharp, that the process may be stopped instanter.

Opening the Lije-door.

There is a second fact to be put in with hard, sharp emphasis. Life through Jesus comes only as fully as the opened door permits. You will note that I am not speaking of heaven, the after-life, but of this tremendous life we are living now. There is a truth here for the after-life, too, no doubt. The after-life will be shaped upon the life lived here. A man’s life here becomes the mould or standard for that great after-life. Of course this does not affect a man’s salvation; the jact of it. But then, who is there who is willing to be saved by the skin of his teeth, pulled in at the end of a rope, without a covering rag to his life, barely in, breathlessly sprawling where he has gotten in!

This new life through Jesus begins now as quickly as the spirit’s door is opened to Him. It begins coursing through all a man’s being. It affects all of his powers. It touches into new vitality and new beauty every gift with which man is endowed. But it can come only as it is allowed to come. The man’s will always remains supreme in his life. Even when God’s will is made supreme in a life, as it should be, it is by the imperial act of the man’s own will. A man’s will is never greater in action than when all its great fine-grained strength is used in yielding to God’s will. A man can keep the door partially shut.

Will it seem severe if I say that most men do? Yet the truth seems to force just that statement out into plainest speech. And a partially opened door means only partial Ufe incoming, and partial death remaining. I remember an old, dear friend of mine, a splendid man in his strong, gentle spirit, a great leader among men, the great leader in the movement with which his life was and is identified. Yet he died when a man should be in the mature fulness of his powers. For certain habits of life common among men, not commonly regarded as wrong, and not wrong except as being against the law of life in the body — yet that is a great and grievous exception — sapped his vitality, and poisoned the body, and led to the death that should have been delayed for years.

And as I speak of him I recall another great leader, in another sphere of activity in the religious world, who sHpped the tether of life when in the prime of his years, for like reasons. These men sinned against the law of their bodies. And that is sinning against the God of our bodies. God needs us and our strength. Whatever takes us away before His time, or takes away our strength, hampers God in His activities among men just that far. They sinned unwittingly no doubt, thoughtlessly, and yet there is apt to be a certain wilfulness in such thoughtlessness. Many men sin ignorantly. Yet such ignorance is a sin, for we can know and should know how best to live for the glory of God.

Jesus’ gift of life is both for the after-life, the eternal life, and for the present time. The present life affects far more seriously than we know the fulness of life in that after-life. Only as the door is swung fully open can Jesus give fulness of life here and after. Full surrender to the sway of Jesus, becoming in practice more really full as new light comes, is the open door to full life from Jesus’ hand. Partial surrender means partial life.

There is an exception to be noted here. Fulness of life does not mean absence of bodily death yet. For Jesus’ plan of life has not yet been fully carried out. He is to reign until all enemies are put under His feet; then the last enemy, death, is to be put down, too, but not until then. Jesus’ redemption will be completed on His return. Meanwhile, with this exception noted, there is fulness of life through fulness of His sway within.

Sin Needs Double Treatment.

The third quahfying fact goes to the heart of the whole matter. It really has been said already in another way, but should be put in again for the emphasis of repetition, and for the plainest putting of it into words. It is this: there is one sin that even the blood — say it very softly and reverently — that even the blood of Jesus cannot cleanse away; that is, the sin, any sin, that / cling to. This is going to the very tap-root of the whole matter. His blood avails only against the sin that I break with, turn out of doors. Sin needs double treatment if it is to be thoroughly gotten rid of, first by the man who sins, then by that Man who never sinned; the first must use a sharp-edged knife, the Second will use a red stream, and then fire; the first must cut it out, and cut it off, so far as his will can do that, and it can do it fully; the Second will take away its guilt and power.

Oh! for a band of sin- fearers; men with a horror and dread of sin in any shape, and under any guise; a band of sin-haters and sin- fighters who will fight it tooth and nail, day and night, mercilessly, relentlessly, with all the power of loving tact and diplomacy, and all the rugged, immovable obstinacy of mountain rock; and who will give Jesus full entrance into their lives, push the door clear back till its knob scratches the inner wall, that so He may come in full face with all His glorious flood tide of life.

There’s a simple story told of a longshoreman in Scotland. He was a rough, ignorant man, and a hard drinker. One night he went in an intoxicated condition to a mission hall, intending to make a disturbance and break up the meeting. But a tactful Christian gentleman came and sat down by his side and began talking with him. He quieted down and listened. Then the two kneeled in prayer. And that strange thing, called in religious talk conversion, must have taken place, for when they rose from their knees he was evidently a different man. There was a new look in his face, a changed spirit looked out of his eyes, and his manner was gentle and deferential.

In a voice affected by the deeper feelings within he thanked the gentleman, saying he must go home and tell his wife, and went out. As he entered his home his wife was just going up the stairs with their son to put him to bed. He called to her, “Come down stairs, lassie, with the lad; I’ve been converted; we must have prayers in our house.” And she muttered aloud, * ‘Hehh! drunk again 1 “But he said,” Nay, nay, lassie, I’m na drunk; I tell you I’ve been converted; bring down the lad, and we’ll have prayers.” And wondering in her heart what had come over her husband she came down, and the three of them knelt on the bare floor to pray.

But he didn’t know how to pray. He never had prayed. His lips didn’t know any word of that sort. And the situation was getting embarrassing. There they are, the three, kneeling in silence, the sleepy boy wondering, and the awed wife wondering, and the man himself wondering what to say. Then like a quick flash he remembered how they had done in the city years before when the Queen had been there. And as that come to him, he picked his knit cap from his head and, whirling it in the air, cried out with an earnest, reverent cry, ‘’Hooray for Jesus! hooray for Jesus!” Then they went to bed.

When I realize how Jesus came down here, and stepped into man’s place, and bore a death that naturally would not have come to Him, I feel like uncovering head, and heart, and will, and with the deepest reverence of love, repeating the longshoreman’s prayer, ‘’Hooray for Jesus.”

The wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, Perplexed Searchers.

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