God's, Sentence on Man

‘^ T 7HEN the ostrich, scouring along the sandy desert, finds that it cannot escape the huntsman, it is said to thrust its head into a bush, and remain there, quite tranquil, to receive the death-blow. Poor senseless, stupid bird it seems to fancy that the danger which it ceases to see has ceased to exist. But men, as well as brutes, do so; and not by one degree more rational than the composure of a bird at whose folly they themselves be the first to smile, is the peace of those who, that they may enjoy the pleasures of sin, shut their eyes to its evil, and refuse to look that, and their own danger, in the face. I do not deny that they, having persuaded themselves that sin is a trivial thing, and by no means, to use the language of Scripture, exceeding sinful, a sort of peace. They have laid the flattering unction to their souls that God is all merciful — that they have not been great sinners — that they have done no one harm, but themselves perhaps — that many people are worse than they — and that however they may have sinned, the prayers and penitence of a death-bed shall set all right. But I have seen the administration of an opiate produce a similar effect — casting a man into so deep a slumber that he felt no pain. But for the low whispers of the attendants, the solemn stillness of the room, and the anxious countenances of those that were watching by his side, none would have fancied that a mortal disease was raging within his vitals, and hurrying him on to the grave. And not more different this sleep from tired nature’s healthful slumbers, than the peace of the ungodly from his who is resting by faith on Jesus, and has made his callinc and election sure.’

Nor is it only exemption from ‘the stings of conscience a man may enjoy who shuts his eyes to the elal of sin. He may enjoy positive happiness of a kind; and be to appearance Wither and in better spirits than better men. What of that? So is yon drunkard who has drowned all his sorrows with his senses in the flowino; bowl — the ragged wretch who, untouched by the sad looks of the broken-hearted wife and children that sit cowering, shivering over some niiserable embers stands on the floor of his dismantled home, and casts idiot smiles on the wreck around him. I do not deny that there is pleasure in sin. Were it not sOj there would be fewer sinners. But when I look at its end — that the way of transgressors is hard — how justly may it be compared to the delirium of sailors who, when the bonds of order are broken, and all further efforts to save themselves and their ship are abandoned, hoist the spirit cask on deck, and maddening their brains with drink, go down into the deep amid shouts of laughter and songs of merriment.

Even so many intoxicated with the pleasures of sin go down into perdition.

There is a state worse more hopeless perhaps, ‘han either of these. They stand in great danger of damnation who shut their eyes to the evil of sin, but they in greater who, practising iniquity till conscience grows seared and dead, have ceased to feel its evil. Such in some cases is their apathy that it seems as if God had cast them oif, and said, provoked by their long-continued resistance to the remonstrances of conscience and of his word and Spirit, He is joined to his idols, let him alone.^ There lies our danger if we are trusting for salvation to a death-bed repentance. People think they will be very much alarmed at the approach of death. There is no greater mistake: the greatest wonder death-beds show, and ministers see, being not the calmness with which a believer dies, but the insensibility, the deep, unmoved, and unmoveable apathy with which others meet death. ‘There are no bands in their, death — they are not in trouble as other men, as the Bible says. By their dying-bed — no place for flattery, or ‘healing the hurt of the daughter of God’s people slightly’ — they have been told the most alarming truths; I have thundered the law of Sinai in their ears; I have set forth a dvinor Saviour with the love of

- o

Calvary before their eves but it produced neither a response nor emotion. Fearing nothing, if hoping nothing, they have gone to their own place’ more calmly than many a saint who dies in Jesus’ arms, and leaves earth for heaven.

It is said of the rich man in the parable that *” in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment,’ Alas, it is too late — too late then to get our eyes opened; and therefore I shall try, with prayer for God’s blessing, to set before my readers some considerations calculated to demonstrate and illustrate the evil of sin.

There is a cruel deception often practised on the dying. They are left to indulge hopes of life after their case is hopeless; the friends who were parties to this deception — if friends they can be called — thereby laying up for themselves a source of unavailing regrets. If people are true Christians it is of no moment, or at least of little moment, that they should know themselves to be dying: but if otherwise, the sooner they know the worst the better; for who can tell but God may call at the eleventh hour? There is Something more culpable and cruel than concealment of the truth. The dying are not left to deceive themselves, but are deceived. Every, the most remote, allusion to death is positively forbidden: ingenuity is taxed by schemes of future pleasure, books of light reading, and amusements to divert the mind from solemn thoughts, and keep them cheerful, as it is called: as new and more fatal symptoms arise, they are carefully concealed: they may be shed without the dying chamber, but no tears are allowed, nor sorrow on any face within it j and so the play, the pitiful tragedy, goes on till the poor victim of mistaken kindness is hurried away into an unexpected, and perhaps unprepared for eternity. Verily ’ the tender mercies of the wicked are cruell

But that expression appHes with still more force to those who, called to be ambassadors of Jesus Christ, shrink from setting forth the inherent evil and awful punishment of sin — that, in the words of Scripture, Mt is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against the Lord! ‘Some will not tolerate any allusion to hell, beyond the most distant — and that with bated breath. They cannot abide to hear of it; denouncing him as a gloomy preacher who, not for his own pleasure but others’ profit, ventures on this awful and most sad subject to declare the whole counsel of God. They say, Prophesy unto us smooth things.’ The storm rages, the ship is sinking; yet they deem him an intruder on their peace who attempts to wake them, crying, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise and call upon thy God 1 ‘There are certainly more agreeable topics — the goodness of God, which should lead us to repentance — the love of Christ, which, should sweetly constrain us to live to Him who died for us — the joys of heaven, which by virtue of their superior attractions should withdraw our affections from the things that are seen and temporal to those that are unseen and eternal. No doubt also it is not so much by driving as by drawing that sinners are ordinarily brought to Jesus: and it is a far more agreeable task to melt a hard heart by arguments of kindness, than attempt to break it by arguments of fear — to work with the fire than with the hammer Gods word being compared to both. Yet the same apostle who, scattering Christs blessed name as thick on his epistles as God has done ^tars in the nightly firmament, sought to constrain men by the love of Christ, persuades them also by the terrors of the Lord. He who asked, Despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance? also asked, Thinkest thou, O man, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?^ ‘Knowing the terror of the Lord, said St Paul, we persuade men.-* Hence his tears and these touching words I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, No wonder he wept. The wonder is that we can read with so little emotion what fell in trembling accents from the Saviour’s lips — of a worm that never dieth, and a fire that is never quenched. Why are we so callous? Why is not our pity so moved, and our hearts melted, and our fears awakened for poor careless sinners, that we might adopt the language of the Psalmist, and say, Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law!^

The way of transgressors is indeed hard; and we see the nature of sin plainly revealed in its dreadful effects. For there are two methods by which we may arrive at a knowledge of the nature of anything; we may either analyze Its properties, or discover them by studying its effects. Taking, for instance, a deadly drug — I may, on the one hand by analysis find it to be coinposed of elements highly deleterious and fatal to life; on the other hand, I may take the shorter and more impressive method of administering it to some of the inferior creatures, and see the virulence of the poison in the violence of its effects — horrible convulsions and a speedy death. Some poisons are so deadly that a grain or a few drops of them is as fatal as a ball through the brain or a knife stuck into the heart. To such a poison sin may with truth be compared; and nothing but their ignorance or disregard of its deadly nature would allow men to tamper with it or speak lightly of the smallest sin.

It may be difficult for analysis to convey to some any sense of the evil that lies in all sin; but, surely, that may be understood by contemplating its effects. A child could understand the force latent in a cup of water, on seeing it, when converted into steam, rend asunder a plate of iron or a mass of solid rock; or the power of lightning, if he saw it in the thunderstorm leap dazzling from the clouds, and striking some stately tree rive its trunk, and scatter its leafy glories on the ground; or the venom of the cobras fang, on seeing the reptile raise its hooded crest to strike, and him it struck reel, and fall, and die at his feet. Let sin, in like manner, be tried by its effects j and who, with a mind enlightened, can look on the sad change it has wrought on man, on the divine beauty it defaced, on the favour it forfeited, on the happiness it wrecked, on the curse it has entailed and the fire it has kindled, on the misery it breeds in time and perpetuates in eternity, without seeing sin become exceeding sinful, Look at Eden! Man’s disobedience there, his plucking the forbidden fruit, may seem to some a trivial offence; but does the misery it brought on Adam, and entailed on his posterity throughout all generations, justify such a term? Put a case.

Suppose some day, when passing the house of one revered for his piety, and universally respected for his character, and known to be the gentlest and kindest and most affectionate of fathers, you saw him driving from his door the son and daughter he had loved, and cherished, and lived with in sweetest fellowship — with sad but stern voice ordering them out of his presence, you would stand amazed; but you would neither need him, nor any one else, to assure you that before he had driven forth these weeping ones to want, and shame, and sorrow, they had been guilty of some most aggravated crime — an offence no father could pass by, or palliate, or lightly pardon. But the love God bore to His human children has far transcended any that beats or burns in a fathers or mothers bosom, as the heavens rise above the earth; and who can see Him drive them from His presence, order them away, without feeling that there must be a guilt in sin which we have no line to fathom nor powers to comprehend! There had been no place of woe otherwise, for God has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, nor is He willing that any should perish; nor otherwise had His beloved Son, betrayed by a friend, disowned by the creatures of His hand, and deserted by His Father and God, bled on the accursed tree. If sin was not exceeding sinful and hateful, a less noble victim had satisfied the demands of justice, and a less dreadful expiation upheld the honour of a broken law. How deep the stain which it required the blood of God’s own Son to wash out! How heavy the burden beneath which He sank, whose arms sustain the universe! What sorrows those which forced from His patient lips this cry, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death 1 ’ — the still more mysterious complaint of Calvary, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? If the virulence of a disease may be measured by the violence of its remedy, or the greatness of a debt by the sum paid for the discharge of the, debtor, the evil that is in sin is as immeasurable as the love for which, with all his glowing piety and power of language, St Paul found no fitter expression than this, Oh the height and depth and breadth and length of the love of God, it passeth knowledge!

A bitter thing, whether we contemplate its consequences here or hereafter, in this world or the next, sin undoubtedly is. It is more. That may be called bitter which, in a moral sense, is not evil — inherently and necessarily evil. Extreme poverty is bitter, as where a parent looks round on hungry and hollow-eyed children when there is neither fire on the hearth nor a morsel of food in the house — ‘When they cry for bread, and their mother has none to give them, Yet there is no moral evil in poverty; it is no crime; on the contrary, ‘■ hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom ?^ It is a bitter thing, also, to lie under the hand of acute disease, tossing on a bed of pain, vainly turning from side to side for relief, counting the long night’s lazy hours; when it is night, wearying for the morning; and when the morning comes, wearying for the night. Yet, in a moral sense, there is no evil here; on the contrary, while the outward man perisheth — strength turns to weakness, beauty to ghastly pallor, and symmetry to deformity — the inward man may be renewing day by day. It was a bitter thing for martyrs to suffer for righteousness’ sake;. to pine away in lonely exile; to perish on a scaffold; to be bound and burned at a stake. Yet in a moral sense it was not evil; on the contrary, Christ pronounced them blessed, who suffer; winning a martyr’s crown, great is their reward in heaven. Let us beware of looking on sin as we might on disease, or poverty, or persecution — our only dread its bitter consequences. Take these away; let death come, but not as a grim messenger summoning men to God’s awful presence; let the grave give up its dead, but not to judgment; let there be a place of happiness, but none of misery; and many would see nothing in sin to shock their feelings or deter them from committing it — from drinking up iniquity as the ox drinketh up the water. But what an imperfect view of sin is theirs — imperfect as his of the crimes of robbery or murder who, were there no society to point the finger of scorn at him, nor prison to hold, nor judge to try, nor gallows to hang him, would steal your property, nor scruple to take your life. I believe no man can measure the depths of evil that are in sin; but he certainly has no adequate idea of them who, though sin should cease to be punished, and universal salvation were proclaimed from the skies, so that there were henceforth no hell, nor judgment, but heaven for all and hell for none, would cease to regard it as an evil thing — this abominable thing that I hate,^ saith the Lord.

All the guilt that lies in foul rebellion against the mildest and most merciful of earthly monarchs — in disobeying the kindest, and grieving the best of fathers — in ingratitude to a generous benefactor — in returning cursing for blessing, evil for good, and hatred for favours, in wounding a heart that loves us and the hand that was stretched out to pluck us from destruction — in refusing to please One who, though rich, for our sakes made Himself poor; took our debts on

Him and paid them; took our burdens on Him

s and carried them; and bearing disgrace to crown us with honour saved our lives at the expense of His own; — all that evil, multiplied a thousand and a thousand times, there is in sin. It is a horrible crime committed against a gracious God and a loving Saviour — to say nothing of the injuries our sins have inflicted on ourselves, and the irreparable wrongs they may have done to others. It is from such views that true repentance springs. Are they ours? Different from the remorse of yon haggard and hardened wretch, who, at the door of a prison or the foot of a gallows, when his sins have found him out, sees their evil only in their punishment; it is not where the lake burns to consume, but Jesus bleeds to save, sin is seen in its greatest evil, and felt by Gods people to be their deepest grief. They shall look on him whom they have pierced, and mourn as one mourneth for an only son, and be in bitterness as one is in bitterness for a first-born.^ The importance of correct views of the evil that lies in sin cannot be exaggerated. To inadequate ideas of that may be traced the very imperfect conceptions some entertain of the necessity and great work of the atonement — of Christ, as our substitute, bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows, and so opening up a passage for the ocean of divine love to flow out in the blessings of redemption on this lost and guilty world.

Let every man, says the Apostle, ‘prove his own work;^ and here, I may now remark, we have an admirable test whereby to try the genuineness of our faith and repentance. If our only motive for abstaining from sin lies in the dread of punishment, our obedience, such as it is, springs not from the love of God, but of ourselves. It is entirely selfish; and having no regard to Him whatever, it is in fact but a continual breaking of the law, ‘’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.^ Our case is like that of a servant who has a kind master, but obeys, not because he loves his master, but only his wages, — of a son, who.

but for the dread of the rod, would treat a father’s wishes with insolent contempt, and openly defy his authority. How can God set any value on such obedience? He Himself has answered the question, ‘A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master; if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? If ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person, saith the Lord of hosts?’ The test, therefore, by which to try the genuineness of our faith and repentance lies in this question. Would we sin were no punishment to follow? — in other words, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?’ So Paul puts the question; and how does he answer it? Filled with holy horror at the impious thought, and speaking for all who have undergone a saving change, he replies, God forbid V Does his emphatic exclamation find an echo in our breasts? Does sin appear to us so exceeding sinful that we would not commit it though we had read our names in the book of life, and felt as sure of heaven as if already there? Then, notwithstanding all our transgressions and shortcomings, we may take the comfort of these blessed words, Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord, and by the Spirit of our God/

These views of sin are no doubt calculated to humble us in our own esteem. Humble us? Let the Spirit of our God open our eyes fully to its exceeding sinfulness, and, overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and shame, we shall exclaim with Job, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes, Some, indeed, vain of themselves and of their own doings, maintain a self-complacent spirit, nor stand abashed in the presence of Him before whose glory, as a man screens his eyes from the blaze of the sun, angels veil their faces. How different from a humble Christianas the attitude of yonder Pharisee! See how, like the bird that, strutting proudly on the lawn, unfurls its gaudy tail to display its beauties to the sun, he presents himself for the admiration of God and man. I fast, he says, twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. I thank thee that I am not as other men, or even as this publican/

But it is no evidence that we are abhorred of God, that we have been brought to abhor ourselves; on the contrary, ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, thou wilt not despise, 1/ said St Paul, ‘am the chief of sinners;^ ‘I,^ said David, was as a beast before thee, ‘I,^ said Ezra, ‘■ am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, O my God, for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is gone up unto the heavens;^ and so certainly does a man grow humbler as he grows holier, that it is with self-esteem as with the column of mercury in the tube of a barometer — the higher we ascend, it sinks the lower. What more striking illustration of this than heaven itself affords? There, purified from all conceit and pride, perfect both in humility and in hoIiness, the saints as if unworthy to wear on their heads what Jesus won on his cross, cast their crowns at his feet. There, with eyes death has purged, in purest rays serene, they see God — the true mirror in which to see oursehes. For as the best way to estimate the feebleness of a taper is not to measure the small space its rays illuminate, but to hold it up against the sun, and see its flame grow dull to blackness in the blaze of his burning beams; or as the best way to correct an exaggerated impression of the magnitude of the pyramids were not to measure their dimensions, but to transport them, were it possible, to the foot of some lofty mountain, the snow-crowned monarch of the Alps or Andes; so the best way of measuring ourselves is to measure ourselves with God. Seeing our littleness in His greatness, our vile ingratitude in His boundless goodness, the impurity of our hearts and the sinfulness of our lives in His ineffable and unspotted holiness, it is easy to understand how the best have been the humblest men; and how one, so distinguished for piety and beneficence as Job, should have exclaimed, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes/

If this attempt to set forth the evil of sin has awakened, or deepened, any sense of my readers need of a Saviour, if it has made him think less of himself and more of Christ, it is well. Self-abasement before God — the pledge that the publican went down to his house justified — has characterized not Job and David, not prophets and apostles only, but the elect of God in every age of the church. Read the life of any eminent saint; and from the glowing panegyric of his biographer turn to the page which records the man’s opinion of himself; and how low the estimate, how different the language! The two seem to describe distinct persons; yet, dissimilar as are the portraits, one man sat for both. What hard things he has written against himself, what confessions of guilt and sin he has left, at whose death men exclaimed.

‘A prince and a great man has fallen this day in IsraeP — by whose grave a weeping church has raised the cry My father my father! the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof, For example how did Knox the man above all other men whose name, as the greatest and bravest of her sons, is dear to Scotland, regard himself, estimate the mighty work he had lived to do? The poorest, vilest, most useless never lay lower at the foot of the cross — there, tempted to indulge in self-satisfaction, he passed the last night of his life in mortal conflict with the enemy of souls, conquering, though the battle lasted through all its weary hours, by the blood of the cross. And who, to quote but another case, has not heard of John Wesley — how much, not England only, but the whole world owes to him, to his poetry and his piety, to his love for Christ and love for souls, to his burning zeal and apostolic labours? With his praise in all the churches, and a fame spread wide as the world itself, what estimate did he form of himself? what hopes sustained him in a dying hour? I have been reflecting, he said, on my past life; I have been wandering up and down between fifty and sixty years endeavouring in my poor way to do a little good to my fellow-creatures; and what have I to trust to for salvation? I can see nothing which I have done or suffered that will bear looking at. I have no other plea than this —

“I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.” ’